Issue No. 609
International
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24 - 30 October 2002 Issue No. 609 International |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Clearing the path for change
Where diplomats fail, scholars pick up the slack -- or so the story goes. Nyier Abdou seeks clarity from a conference on cultural exchange at one of America's top universities
Much like many gatherings of experts, analysts and scholars, the conference on "Understanding and Responding to the Islamic World after 9/11," held at Princeton University on 27 and 28 September, was subdued in tone yet fiery in intellectual dogma. Sponsored by the university's Centre of International Studies, the Council on Regional Studies and the recently established Mamdouha S Bobst Centre for Peace and Justice, the conference was designed to address issues of modernisation and democracy in the Arab and Islamic world and engage debate on the West's responses to terrorism.
The conference drew an impressive number of intellectuals from the Arab and Islamic world to the sleepy college town of Princeton, New Jersey, though their number seemed dwarfed by the disproportionately large audience hall where the panel discussions took place. Speakers included Nader Fergany, director of Egypt's Almishkat Centre for Research, and representatives from political and religious departments at American, Arab, European and Islamic universities. Arab journalists like Hazem Saghie, of London's Al-Hayat and Palestinian-Jordanian columnist Rami Khouri, rounded out discussions on civil society, development and governance in the Islamic world. Both speakers and panellists were largely from a similar political and social mindset and the talks came off as an articulate, but one-sided dialogue. The audience was padded out with a number of thinkers who, judging by some of the comments during question and answer periods, were really there to show that they themselves should have been on the panel rather than among the listeners.
The result was that at times, the parley moved into a virtual jamboree of mutual smugness that often veered away from the titular purpose of the gathering: enriching the understanding of the Islamic world in the West. All's fair in scholarship and politics, says Jeffrey Herbst, chair of Princeton University's Department of Politics and the conference's organiser. "The topic was deliberately broad in order to encourage debate and explore the many issues that 9/11 has put in sharp relief," Herbst told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Different speakers obviously feel that particular issues are more or less important."
This often brought discussion to Palestine, and what is seen in the Arab and Islamic world as America's bias towards Israel. In this, the lack of counterpoint was conspicuous, as most panellists were in general agreement that the US was embarrassingly under the thumb of Jewish interest groups. Asked if there was a reason he chose not to include panellists that might defend the Bush administration line, or the pro-Israeli standpoint, Herbst emphasised that Palestine was not the focus of the talks. "The conference was not about the Bush administration, or about Israel, per se," said Herbst. "While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is certainly important, and many speakers alluded to it, we wanted to focus on all of the issues currently affecting the Islamic world."
At first glance, this stance may seem to miss the point altogether, since many might argue that Palestine is the issue currently affecting the Islamic world. Expecting to sideline this issue in a discussion of understanding the Islamic world is something like expecting to discuss modern Jewish culture without directly addressing the Holocaust. However, in retrospect, the conference organisers must have been determined to offer something other than a canned retrospective of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which would inevitably have produced two days of stale back-and-forth of the kind found on any news or talk show.
In the end, the issues panellists grappled with instead were the many faces of Islam; historical, scholarly, spiritual, political and militant. In recent decades, Islamic militants have fought both for American interests and against them under the banner of Islam, most notably in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, political Islam, in many places the most earnest political opposition, has suffered under the onus of its intermingling with militant Islam.
Though divided into separate conference subjects focussed on development, civil society, democracy and governance, inter- cultural understanding and Islamic diversity, discussion centred on two main topics -- on the one hand, the history that brought the Islamic world to a point where militant Islamic groups have garnered significant support, and the United States' poor handling of the 11 September crisis in the court of world opinion, on the other. Duplicity, as it has flourished in the halls of American diplomacy, is the crux of many an argument expounding on the tired, but necessary question that Americans have asked, but failed to explore, since 11 September: "Why do they hate us?" And while it was clear that many speakers stressed the need for the US to dig deeper at the roots of anger and frustration in Arab and Muslim countries, many also pointed to the need for self-reflection and reform in the Muslim world itself.
Speaking of tasteless and racist caricatures of Arabs and Muslims in American newspapers and magazines, Ibrahim Karawan, director of the Middle East Centre at the University of Utah, was quick to point to the degrading images and sweeping generalisations of Jews that can be found in Arab publications. In order to have a leg to stand on, argued Karawan, the Arab world must practice what it preaches when it cries foul in America. Still, the US has far to go in the same department. Ridwan Al-Sayed Ajami, a professor at the Lebanese National University and an Islamic scholar, suggested that Islamic reform is "necessary", but more important is meaningful "political and economic development". While no one can argue that the US is not interested in political change in countries like Iraq, it is obvious that the Bush administration is not concerned with subtlety or fostering gradual progress that takes into account the complexity of cultural and geopolitical concerns. As the US-led campaign in Afghanistan has shown, and as plans for a new campaign in Iraq unfold, it is clear that the US is largely married to the concept of forced regime change or nothing at all.
Ibrahim Karawan says that now is the time to "think seriously" about political reform in the Arab world. Karawan, who is Egyptian, told the Weekly that analysts, himself among them, use the word "crisis" too loosely. But certainly, the rise of militant Islam in the Arab world is no longer a back burner issue. Much talk during the panel discussions touched on the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism as a political ideal, and the formation of violent groups seeking to achieve Islamist goals by militant means. Since Bush launched his so-called war on terrorism, his administration has been keen to stress that its war is not against Islam. But inevitably, militant Islam has dominated the spotlight, overshadowing and essentially consuming the image of Islam in the Western consciousness. Islam, a peaceful religion, has come to be seen not as equivalent to terrorism but a dangerous precursor, a possible founding ground on which the discontent and oppressed can be harnessed and used to violent ends by charismatic leaders. Of course, this is true of almost any ideology or religion, the same suspicions have been cast on socialist and communist ideals in the recent past, with much the same kind of animosity and misunderstanding.
No political reform, says Karawan, can be "meaningful" without "embracing" the issue of political Islam, which he feels should be absorbed by the political framework. "Militant Islam should be dealt with through the law, but political Islam is not going to be buried alive forever," Karawan told the Weekly. "I don't agree with political Islamists myself, but that's beside the point. They are there. You cannot ignore them." More importantly, he insists, they will always be there. Asked if he thought there is recognition in the West of the distinction between political Islam and militant Islam, Karawan noted that the society at large does not "grasp" these distinctions. At best, he offered wryly, "I think they may have a distinction between 'Muslim' and 'Islamist'."
Though many have suggested that the US should be worrying more about political reform in the Arab world than on sending in the tanks, Karawan suggests that meaningful reform will only come when the leadership is seen to have initiated change without the long shadow of the US hanging over it. Reform, coming of its own and without the strong-arm tactics of Washington, is the privilege of a stable country, and a stable leadership. Karawan feels that those leaderships who are capable should introduce change "incrementally".
One important question that emerged from the discussions was whether enough meaningful debate about understanding Arab and Islamic culture could be found in the US -- not just in universities and institutions, but at a more public level. Jeffrey Herbst was quick to affirm that there is "continual debate in the US and the West about what needs to be changed in those societies", but there is markedly less discussion about what needs to be changed in the US and the West. The need for understanding is certainly unequivocal, but history tells us that such understanding does not take root in a society voluntarily and without effort.
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