Al-Ahram Weekly | Opinion | Towards greater dialogue

		27 June - 3 July 2002 Issue No. 592 Opinion	Current issue Previous issue Site map
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Towards greater dialogue
El-Sayed Yassin* attempts to stimulate debate among the international community of intellectuals on the most appropriate means to secure a collective future

In response to a suggestion made by Abdel-Raouf El-Reedy, Egypt's former ambassador to the United States, I was invited by the Council for Foreign Affairs to deliver a lecture on the regional and international ramifications of 11 September. On 11 June I delivered the lecture: it was introduced by Osama El-Ghazali Harb and attended by a broad cross-section of politicians, diplomats, university professors and intellectuals.
Following the lecture I presented the draft of a letter from Egyptian intellectuals to be addressed to their American counterparts, both those who justified the US war against terrorism as a "just war" and those who criticised it. It was then agreed that the draft letter would be discussed in a forthcoming session of the Council of Foreign Affairs. In advance of that session it seemed useful to put this letter, which I prepared and for which I bear full responsibility, before a wider public, in the hope that it will elicit ideas and criticisms that will enrich discussion and help improve the text which follows.
Intellectuals, from across the political spectrum in Egypt, address this letter to American intellectuals, whether those who consider the US war against terrorism a "just war", an opinion embodied in the letter of the Institute of American Values of 12 February 2002, among the signatories of which were Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukayama, or those who had the courage to declare their opposition to this war, as was the case in the letter written in April by 120 academics to their European counterparts, a letter which carried the signatures of the noted historian Howard Zein and the celebrated critic and novelist Gore Vidal.
We affirm, from the outset, our unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist attacks against the US on 11 September. We further condemn attacks against civilians on principle, whether they occur in the US, as happened on 11 September, or in Afghanistan, as during the US campaign, or in Palestine, in the West Bank or Gaza, at the hands of Israeli occupation forces.
We hold the right to life and safety as the most basic human right. This right must be respected by all nations and guaranteed effectively by the UN. Terrorists, political leaders and war criminals who violate this right should be brought to account before the International Criminal Court, an institution intended by the international community to prosecute war criminals, and for which the US continues to withhold support.
We have observed the growing hostility towards Arabs and Muslims in the US media following the attacks of 11 September with concern. Arabs and Muslims have invariably been portrayed as potential terrorists, to be viewed with suspicion. Islam has been assailed as a religion that breeds and encourages terrorism.
These campaigns ignore the fact that terrorism is a worldwide phenomenon and that extremist political and religious movements exist in every country, including the US, where many ultra-religious groups exist, some of which have no qualms about violently attacking the federal government.
Some US intellectuals, perhaps to facilitate the realisation of the objectives of the Bush administration, have sought to promote the US war against terrorism -- a war whose principle slogan appears to be "those who aren't with us are against us" -- as a just war. To these we say that we reject any such description of a war waged outside the bounds of international legitimacy, and beyond the confines of time or place. At the same time we state our agreement with the letter of April written by those opposed to this universalised war and aware of its threat to international stability.
Implicit in the US administration's habitual division of the world's nations into good and evil is the potential to spark religious and racially motivated regional and international conflicts. Such rhetoric constitutes a threat to the all-too-often disenfranchised populations of those nations the US chooses to brand as evil. Furthermore, Washington's declared intention to strike Iraq militarily and to oust its regime outside of the framework of international legitimacy threatens chaos in international relations and destroys the very foundations of international law.
Washington's implicit carte blanche to Israel to unleash its campaign of aggression against the Palestinian people poses a grave threat to regional security in the Middle East and exposes the Palestinian people to enormous suffering in contravention of all international treaties and conventions.
It is for these reasons that we invite US intellectuals to engage in an open and constructive dialogue, with the purpose of reaching solutions that will save the international community from the dangers in which US policy places it. Such dialogue should take place within the UN framework, specifically the General Assembly.
We ask American intellectuals, and intellectuals from around the world, to appeal to the UN secretary-general to hold a global dialogue of civilisations. We take this opportunity to praise the initiative of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, forming a committee representative of the diversity of contemporary cultures and charged with writing a collective report on the Dialogue Among Civilisations. Chaired by the secretary-general's personal representative Giandomenico Picco (Italy), the committee consisted of Dr A Kamal Aboul-Magd (Egypt), Dr Lourdes Arizpe (Mexico), Dr Hanan Ashrawi (Palestine), Dr Ruth Cardoso (Brazil), The Honorable Jacques Delors (France), Dr Leslie Gelb (US), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), HRH Prince Al-Hassan bin Talal (Jordan), Professor Sergey Kapitza (Russia), Professor Hayao Kawai (Japan), Professor Tommy Koh (Singapore), Professor Hans Küng (Switzerland), Graça Machel (Mozambique), Professor Amartya Sen (India), Dr Song Jian (China), Dick Spring (Ireland), Professor Tu Weiming (China), the Honorable Richard von WeizsŠcker (Germany) and Dr Javad Zarif (Iran).
Published in October 2001, the committee's crucial report, Crossing the Divide, concluded that the current pattern of international relations, generated by the political, economic and cultural manifestations of globalisation, had to be replaced by a new global order founded upon the following principles: equality between all nations, without discrimination; the reassessment of the commonly held concept of the "enemy" in the current global cultural climate; the equitable distribution of power among nations; the plurality of interests among nations; individual responsibility for political decisions; the establishment of alliances on the bases of the fundamental issues that concern humanity.
We believe that this UN-sponsored report can serve as a basis for an extensive dialogue among civilisations to be held in a special session of the UN General Assembly. In this forum intellectuals from around the world will be able to contribute to the discussions, alongside representatives of the major institutions within international civil society that have become integral to the international order, and representatives of UN member states.
We believe that there is no clash between civilisations and that all peoples of the world, including the Arab and Muslim peoples, aspire to live in peace, in a climate of respect for human rights, for democracy and plurality.
In this context, however, a clear distinction must be drawn between the legitimate right of a people to resist foreign occupation, and terrorism, the latter being rightly condemned by the international community.
Humanity's collective future depends on adherence to the principles of international legitimacy and the exercise of dialogue among civilisations, and on reinforcing the ability of the UN to act as an umbrella beneath which justice among nations can be achieved.
* The writer is a political sociologist, columnist and former director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

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