Maintaining direction
However unbearable the injustice, suicide is never the answer, writes Taha Abdel-Alim*
As the Islamic world, and especially the Arab part of it, tries to confront the questions raised by the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US, the gravest threat it faces is losing its sense of direction. We are in danger of falling into the trap of believing in an inevitable clash, with Muslims and Arabs on one side and non-Muslims, especially the West, on the other. But the only way out of the desperation that many Muslims and Arabs feel in having seen their just causes dealt with in such a profoundly unjust manner is to try to correct the misguided American view of the causes of terrorism and the possible responses to it.
As we try to resist the injustices we suffer -- no matter how legitimate our anger at the global silence surrounding them -- we must not fall prey to a suicidal mentality. If we are to maintain our sense of direction, this must be the starting point. Arabs and Muslims, like any other people, seek a free, dignified existence, not death and suicide. There is no more terrible and provocative expression of this desperation than the statement made some time ago by the great Algerian freedom-fighter Ahmed Ben Bella on the Al-Jazeera television network: "If I could destroy this unjust world by blowing myself up," he said, "I would not hesitate." The solace found by those who hold such a bleak view was also summed up for me recently by a venerable Iranian diplomat. When I asked him, "Won't Muslims also be destroyed with the rest of humanity in the explosion of human bombs?" "Yes," he answered. "But they will also enter Paradise."
To avoid being led down this suicidal path, Muslims and Arabs should not be tempted to see the world through the eyes of Mullah Omar, Osama Bin Laden, or Ayman El-Zawahri. These, and others like them in Tora Bora and the caves of Afghanistan, look at the world through the eyes of extremism, seeing only a world they wish to annihilate. Their response to injustice is to blow themselves up in the name of Islam, of which they know nothing, or raise the banner of jihad, under cover of which they commit their crimes. They see only unbelievers -- a mixture of Hindus, Confucians and Buddhists in India, China, Japan and the rest of Asia, and in the North and West more infidels and crusaders from America and Europe. In Africa, they see only pagans. They have also proclaimed their fellow Muslims to be unbelievers, committing acts of terror against them on the pretext that present Islamic societies are not ruled by the word of God. It would be more accurate to say that these societies are not ruled by these people's suicidal vision.
True Muslims do not see the world and others in such a distorted way. Indeed, despite Western collusion and opportunism, mainstream Muslims have denounced those who believe it permissible to destroy anyone who does not believe or think as they do. However, despite this, and despite the Egyptian Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya's recent initiative to renounce violence, it is still necessary to reform Islamic discourse in order to put forth a responsible vision and an equally responsible politics. Only this will allow Arabs and Muslims to face the real injustices they suffer, as well as the imagined ones.
To avoid the catastrophes that might result if we do not maintain a true course -- catastrophes we have suffered in the recent past -- we must try to answer the questions that 11 September has forced onto the agenda, especially those related to defining terrorism, identifying its sponsors and diagnosing its causes. There are four fundamental questions that Arab and Muslim leaders and intellectuals should answer, questions that should be examined objectively no matter how much discomfort they might cause.
The first of these questions is how Arabs and Muslims should confront the dismal global silence over the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, with its attendant assassinations, terrorism, racism and settlement operations. The second is how Arabs and Muslims should deal with the double standards embodied in waging a war on the Iraqi regime, when accusations of threatening regional security and possessing weapons of mass destruction should also be directed at Israel.
The third question is how Arabs and Muslims should confront growing discrimination, hatred and the distortion of their religion in the context of the war on terror, which proceeds from an incorrect definition of terrorism, a very limited diagnosis of its causes and an arbitrary selection of sponsoring states. And the fourth and final question is how Arabs and Muslims should deal with the so-called Partnership Initiative between the US and the Middle East, when this seems to be nothing more than an attempt by America to restructure the economy, society and culture of countries in the region in its own image.
We must provide reasonable answers to these questions if we are to maintain our sense of direction, starting with the recognition that Arabs and Muslims are not the only peoples in the world that have been subject to injustice, oppression and discrimination. Africans -- Muslims, Christians and others -- have suffered the horrors of slavery, racism and colonialism. Confucians, Hindus and Buddhists in China, India and Vietnam have also experienced European colonialism, while the atomic bomb was twice inflicted on the Japanese and a humiliating peace forced on them at the end of World War II. Millions of European Christians, as well as Jews, were killed by fascist and other dictatorial regimes during the course of the 20th century. We should not be alone in harbouring feelings of historical injustice.
Concerning the Palestinian issue, a just and lasting peace in the near future has been made less likely by the victory of the Israeli right at the recent elections in Israel. Nor do the arbitrary conditions imposed by the US to maintain its own vision of a peace settlement bode well for such a peace. However, President Bush's official support of a future independent Palestinian state, together with his demands that the Israeli occupation end and that the expansion of Israeli settlements be stopped, should not be underestimated. The fact that even Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who probably wishes that the Palestinians would simply disappear from the face of the earth, has in principle agreed to the idea of a Palestinian state, even if he imagines it on only 10 per cent of historical Palestine, is also worth remembering.
At the same time, it is essential that the Palestinian resistance abide by international law in its fight to win the right of its people to choose their own destiny. Resistance to the Israeli occupation should avoid targeting civilians, and it should take up weapons only where no peaceful alternative can be found. If this policy is pursued, the Palestinian people will find increasing, and increasingly effective, support coming from the international community, on both the popular and official levels. If Palestinians must fight, then they should fight as one under a leadership that is responsible to its people and defends their legitimate rights.
Moreover, the Palestinian resistance should rally around one clear goal: the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem on land occupied by Israel in 1967. It should be noted that Palestinian negotiators can make no concessions on the right of return of Palestinian refugees, or of their compensation, without the consent of the refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 194/1948, and that the Taba talks and Arab League initiative point the way forward to a peaceful, realistic settlement.
Regarding the Iraqi question, Arabs and Muslims rightly oppose a war on Iraq to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction it may have in its possession. The reason is simple: they reject the double standard that ignores the fact that Israel also has a nuclear arsenal while proscribing any development in the same direction by Iraq. At the same time, many Arabs and Muslims admit, at least tacitly, that Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Iraqi regime's reluctance to admit its crime, has undermined the Arab position, making it difficult to oppose an unjust war, the price of which the Iraqi people will pay. The Iraqi regime has led the majority of the world's peoples and governments to believe that it is a threat to security and stability in the region. If Iraq wants to strengthen the global front opposing the war, it must refute these claims in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1441, which Syria -- the only Arab member of the Council -- voted for.
Arabs and Muslims should not fall prey to the illusion of being singled out in the US drive to disarm Iraq. America has already forced Russia to downsize its nuclear capabilities without itself making similar concessions. The US also did not lift its sanctions against India, due to India's possession of nuclear weapons, until the war in Afghanistan forced it to do so. It still includes North Korea in the "axis of evil", and will use every means to rid it of its nuclear capabilities.
The Arabs and Muslims are not the only ones to have doubts about the goals of a war with Iraq or of the wider US war on terror, as was shown by a global opinion poll undertaken by the US- based Pew Center from July to October 2002. This poll, which surveyed 38,000 people in 44 countries, found that 75 per cent of French people polled, 76 per cent of Russians, 54 per cent of Germans and 44 per cent of British thought that the US was seeking control of Iraq's oil reserves in its present campaign against that country. The poll also showed that most of the world sees America in a more negative light since 11 September, and there is a growing feeling that the US is seeking to bolster its own global interests through the war on terror. Pollsters noted that opposition to this war was not limited to Arab or Islamic countries, but also included South Korea and Argentina.
At the same time, however, the citizens of some countries were increasingly supportive of American policies, including of the war on terror, US support for Israel and of the war on Iraq, according to this same poll. In Russia, public support for American policies rose from 37 per cent before 11 September to 61 per cent after, and even in an Islamic country like Uzbekistan it rose from 56 per cent to 85 per cent. Probably Russian public opinion would have been less supportive of American policies had the Arab and Islamic condemnation of Russian crimes in Chechnya been accompanied by an unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist acts carried out by the Chechen resistance, or if more support had been given to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference's frank rejection of Muslim separatist movements in non-Islamic countries.
Similarly, rising support for American policies among Uzbekistan's Muslims is not only a result of the economic benefit they have derived from the presence of US forces on their soil. It also goes back to their fears of witnessing the sort of self-destruction seen in Chechnya and Afghanistan. The vast majority of Uzbeks accept the secular nature of the state, and they are frustrated by the meagre amount of economic aid received from the Arab countries. Moreover, they, along with other Muslims of the former Soviet Union, believe that some Arab countries are exporting extremist Islamist ideas.
Above all, however, the cases of Russia and Uzbekistan show that the Arab countries must work to create and strengthen their shared interests with the developing countries around them. This would be a step that would also garner the world's support for their own causes.
In the aftermath of September 2001 and the events of last year, there remain several further questions: have the Arabs and Muslims themselves played a role in shaping the negative views about them now prevalent in the world, or have they been unfairly treated here as well? How should they react to discrimination and to the distortion of their religion? How can we hasten our steps along the road to progress, in accordance with our own national interests and without outside interference?
Our aims should be to create an information society and open economy by raising exports, lowering unemployment, fostering democracy and the respect for human rights, fighting corruption, achieving gender equality and developing education and religious tolerance. We are still a long way from achieving such goals.
* The writer is deputy director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
