Hazhir Teimourian
The long journey from the Kurdish mountains has taught this distinguished journalist painful lessons about the mismatch between Islam and democracy and the pitfalls of multiculturalism.
It would be a brave man who drew up a list of all the possible implications of the New Terrorism for the world. Some are obvious: a more serious economic recession, a deepening of the phobia for Islam among many nations, the overthrow of the Taliban savages in Kabul in the coming weeks, the landing of an Anglo-American army in Iraq in the spring, a wider license given to intelligence services in the west to watch everyone of us, and a strengthening of support for the far right in Europe.
But what else, and in the longer term, as if this preliminary list were not horrifying enough? We have no alternative to straining our eyes harder. Far too much is at stake.
My perspective is naturally dictated by my particular circumstances. I was brought up in the Kurdish highlands of western Iran, came to England in 1959 to study science here, fell under the influence of such distinctly non-Middle Eastern thinkers as Bertrand Russell, married a westerner, discovered the string quartets of Haydn, brought up two children.
But in the new world of populations milling around and settling down among their former rivals or enemies, I am not unique. In fact, my perspective may be shared by millions, and not only immigrants.
Islam or democracy?
Of the acres of comment that continues to be printed in the western press, I have found a column by Michael Binyon, the diplomatic editor of The Times, to be one of the most perceptive, and one of the most painful. As it happens, I know Michael well. Until several years ago, we were colleagues on The Times, with me specialising in the politics and history of Islam. In my view, Michael represents the best of old England: kind, restrained, highly educated. As a result, I think, he was slightly irritated by my belief that Islamic thought and democracy were incompatible, and that large-scale immigration was dangerous. It therefore reinforced my sadness to see last Saturday that Michael seemed to have arrived at my way-station.
Michael and I had disagreed about such Arab terrorists as bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. While I diagnosed them as charismatic psychopaths, Michael attributed the immense crime of September 11 to "the failure of the Arab dream". He said, correctly, that for centuries all attempts to reconcile Islam and the modern world had been suppressed, and that Muslims felt belittled by the phenomenal prosperity, freedom and military strength of their old Crusader enemy, the west. This reminded me of the way I used to say that when many Muslims saw Americans walking on the moon, they did not think of them as Americans, but as Christians.
Now Michael was quoting sympathetically Ahmad Beshara, the former secretary general of the Gulf Co-operation Council: "Regardless of where the eventual blame finally lands, our society has a problem," he had written in the English-language Arab Times daily newspaper, "for terrorist acts are nothing but a violent manifestation of the greater Arab-Islamic culture that is laden with intolerance and embraces violence as a means of change. It edifies terrorists."
The diplomatic editor of The Times ended his column with these words of his own: "Since then [the 19th century], the dysfunction between Muslim societies and Muslim thought has grown. This is what has fuelled the extremists" anger at the West. And this lies at the heart of Ahmad Beshara's worries about where
Islamic culture is going
Unfortunately, the sanity of Ahmad Beshara was all too rare in the Muslim press last week. I came across only one columnist, in the Saudi-owned London daily Al Hayat (Life), who objected to the widespread pleas of mitigation by Arab officialdom for the criminals. The abominable editor of the Egyptian weekly, Al Arabi, expressed a sentiment that was more typical of the Muslim masses. He wrote: "Yes, we have the right to rejoice [over all those American dead]. This was the first step in the thousand-mile journey to knock out America." The Cairo daily Al Ahrar (The Free), the newspaper of the "Liberal" Party, echoed the sentiment. "We have been ordered [by the government] not to show the joy that we feel", he wrote. "But in this case, rejoicing is a national and religious obligation."
Five years of military conflict
Where do we go from here? In my opinion, if the western powers are serious about uprooting the new terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction – and I cannot see what alternative they have – we must prepare ourselves for at least five years of military conflict between those powers and some states in the Muslim world.
The overthrow of the Taliban regime in Kabul will be the easiest part. They are an isolated rabble and their morale is already collapsing. Remember how Saddam Hussein lost the war of 1991 the moment his troops heard that American and British troops were on their way to the region. Expect that in the next week or two, the forces of the recognised government of Afghanistan, just 20 miles north of Kabul and already receiving Russian and American aid, will walk into the capital to begin the recapture of the rest of the country.
The real challenge will probably come in the spring, when the west will find that bin Laden’s organisation has established a strong base in Baghdad, whether or not bin Laden himself will still be alive. Any serious attempt to remove Saddam will set off widespread riots throughout the Arab world and cause some political disruption here by such liberal newspapers as The Guardian and such pacifist politicians as Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House of Commons and a regular lunch guest in Baghdad. Something might also have to be done about Libya and Yemen.
Uncontrollable anti-Western rage
Will such confrontation set off other terror attacks against the West, even if only on a smaller scale? Probably. And what about the Muslims already settled here? Will they be further alienated from their new host communities by their solidarity with fellow Muslims in the Middle East, by the behaviour of western thugs towards them, and by the new, unavoidable decision of western governments to make them special subjects for snooping and espionage? Again, probably.
The greater danger, however, will come from the way that Muslim dictators will handle the new situation. Though many of them rely on American might or money for their very survival, they may feel so vulnerable to the anti-western rage of their populations during the coming confrontation that they might not dare to resort to repression to suppress their extremists. If this happens, Europe and north America will have no alternative to throwing a cordon sanitaire around the Islamic world to minimise the normal coming and going of individuals. At the same time, those of us immigrants here who are of Middle Eastern appearance would be looked upon increasingly as enemies inside the castle. The first iron curtain, the one that ran roughly along the Mediterranean at the time of the first Crusade in 1096, might well resurface, but this time it would also divide many western cities.
What Muslim immigrants should do now
Fearing confrontation of this type twenty years ago, I brought up my children in the Church of England, even though I myself had no faith. I thought that a thorough immersion in the dominant religion of their country would enable them to identify with Britain more easily and also understand where it came from in history. The fact that they are now completely at peace with Britain and relaxed about who they are may, nevertheless, not protect them now. I fear that, after all, they may one day be forced to leave the shores of the only country they have and love merely because of their appearance.
Is there anything that we can do to avoid such a future? Yes, there is. Immigrants could show their loyalty to their new nations by revealing to the police any information that they might have against the common enemy. Native liberals, too, ought to admit that they were naive in their embracing of the ‘multi-cultural society’ and all its flags of separatism. They ought now encourage immigrants to leave behind the ways of their original homelands and appreciate the emancipated culture of the west for which so many generations have fought.
Bush Turns Back on Muslims
Bush has ambushed American Muslims who supported him. He has not kept his promises and does not care for Palestinian suffering
By Muqtedar Khan
June 21, (The Detroit News)-- There were several reasons why American Muslims voted for George W. Bush in November. Chief among them was the perception that both Bill Clinton and Al Gore were too heavily invested with the Israeli lobby to adopt a balanced approach to the Palestinian issue.
Since under Clinton all the important foreign policy positions were held by American Jews, some of whom, like the U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, had a long history of lobbying for Israel, it was impossible to expect Democrats to be evenhanded toward Palestine so a fair and sustainable solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict could be reached.
But recent comments that Bush made to the American Jewish Committee suggest that perhaps American Muslims' faith in the president was misplaced.
Bush declared, "My administration will be steadfast in supporting Israel." He added for good measure, "A top foreign policy priority of my administration is the safety and security of Israel."
Such words sound very similar to the ones Bush uttered to American Muslims. The difference is that promises to Muslims were made before the election and promises to American Jews are being made after the election. American Muslims find this Bush posturing difficult to understand or accept given that 78 percent of American Muslims voted for Bush whereas less than 20 percent of American Jews did so.
Bush has already played host to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and President Katsav. Moreover his aides have made it clear that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is not welcome in Washington. The White House does not acknowledge letters written by prominent American Muslim organizations, including those who endorsed Bush.
During Clinton's presidency, American Muslim organizations were welcome in the White House, and Arafat had accumulated an enviable amount of frequent flier miles from his trips to Washington. In contrast, American Muslims and Palestinians have lost access to the presidency under Bush.
The American hands-off approach has meant that Palestinians have no recourse but to be at the mercy of the Israeli army. Violence and pain continue unabated. While the administration maintains that violence in Israel is largely the fault of Palestinians and Arafat's unwillingness to stop it, 500 Palestinians are dead and more than 1,000 seriously injured.
Sharon has interpreted the American hands-off approach as license to use excessive violence to break the Palestinian spirit. Tanks, F- 16s and helicopter gun ships are used at the slightest provocation. He has also escalated the building of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land and has made no commitment to stop them in spite of the Mitchell report's indictment that they are a major source of conflict and violence. Bush has yet to address settlement building.
The current cease-fire is a de-escalation rather than stoppage of violence. It is caused more by fatigue and the sobering effect of the suicide bombers' devastating attack on Israeli civilians. But the relative calm will not last unless some concrete steps are taken to ameliorate the condition of the Palestinians, whose lives and livelihood are still blockaded by Israeli forces.
U.S. initiatives taken through CIA Director George Tenet are basically in the interest of Israel. Tenet has merely opened a communication channel between the two sides to guarantee the safety of Israeli citizens. No measure has been taken to guarantee the same for Palestinians.
The United States can achieve its goals in the region only by gaining the trust and confidence of all parties involved. Muslims everywhere look to American Muslims for guidance about the United States. Bush has ambushed American Muslims who supported him. They have found that he does not keep his promises and does not care for Palestinian suffering. This lack of trust in Bush will hinder any breakthrough in the Middle East on issues central to U.S. interests - - such as Israel and oil prices.
The first blow in the backlash against Bush will be felt here in Michigan. The local and national presidents of the American Muslim Council, disgusted with Bush, intend to send a message by supporting David Bonior for governor. Bonior, by fighting the secret evidence act and airport profiling of Arabs, has proved that he is a man of his word, unlike the toxic Texan.
Arab-Muslim Conference Slams U.S.
Leaders of Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah call U.S. "sponsors of terrorism" for its support of Israel.
By Hussein Dakroub
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Activists and clerics at an Arab-Muslim conference, including the leaders of Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, denounced the United States on Wednesday as a "sponsor of terrorism" for its support of Israel. The hastily organized conference was called to "discuss how to cope with the aftermath" of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, said Nawaf Musawi, an official with the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah.
Among the 200 delegates at the two-day gathering were two of Israel's leading enemies, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, and Ramadan Abdullah Shalah, head of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad. The United States has characterized both as terrorist groups, although they were not on the U.S. list of groups and individuals whose accounts President Bush ordered frozen after last month's attacks.
Delegates claimed Washington's campaign against terrorism was aimed at "regaining complete American hegemony on the entire world."
"The United States exploited the humanitarian tragedy to which thousands of innocent Americans had been subjected to present itself as a victim and conceal the real picture of the U.S. policy, which is based on oppression, domination and aggression," delegates said in a statement.
A senior Shiite Muslim cleric said the United States would expect other countries to risk lives and foot the bill for a war on terrorism.
"America wants everyone to take part in the mourning, but not to offer their tears. Instead, it wants them to offer their blood, wealth and money," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in a speech whose text was released Wednesday.
The government of Lebanon, where the conference was held, has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks and said it will fully cooperate in the investigation of them. But top Lebanese officials, including President Emile Lahoud, have made clear that Lebanon holds different views than Washington on terrorism and resistance, such as Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli troops during Israel's 18-year occupation of south Lebanon.
Hezbollah led the guerrilla war against Israeli forces until they withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility for suicide bombings in Israel.
Hezbollah said its air defense units fired at Israeli warplanes that violated Lebanese airspace Wednesday. Lebanese security officials confirmed Hezbollah's claim.
Reliving the conflicts of a colonial past
Bin Laden's demands threaten both the west and its client states
Rana Kabbani
Tuesday October 9, 2001
The Guardian
"Let there be no moral ambiguity," thundered Tony Blair a few days ago, even as he was gladly having thrust upon him deeply ambiguous contingency plans for another round of Anglo-American target-practice. This time they will be aiming, not at illegally fabricated no-fly zones over hungry Iraq, but at a population that is hungrier still. The people on the receiving end must rank, by any real (rather than Machiavellian) moral standard, as the most frightened, dispossessed and put-upon mass of civilians anywhere in the world.
In a replay of the same "humanitarian" scenario meted out to the Iraqis 10 years ago, the US and British are throwing bombs with one hand and food parcels with another. It is a shameful attempt to neutralise what history will show to have been nothing more than a military act of pure revenge that cleans up no "swamp" .
In any case, the spin-doctors are not winning this round. Across the world, there has been a cathartic release of pent-up silences from people who, for too long, had been stunned into the belief that politics had reached a dead end, in a world where history was supposed to have come to a close. Where political and social rights - the rights of children or of women, environmental rights - are swept under the carpet of globalisation, to be pulled out, one by one and for a mere, flickering second, when and whenever expedient. Which brings us to Tony Blair's speech last week to the Labour party conference.
Gifted with the ability to form full sentences, and pronounce foreign names with far more felicity than his friend in the White House, the British prime minister set himself the tub-thumping task of haranguing us with the shape of things to come. The new world order he promised (yet another one to be cooked up from a tried and tested Bush family recipe) is to be a delectable thing, where good will triumph and suffering, particularly that of women, will be blown out of the water - with the help of British submarines, as it now transpires.
But Mr Blair's neatly-timed defence of Afghan women, who have suffered every conceivable setback in their lives since western democracies took a keen interest in their country, cannot but remind one of Lord Cromer, a late 19th century British colonial ruler in Egypt, and his sudden and mythical transformation into a feminist. An enthusiastic oppoment of the British suffragettes, Cromer pledged to liberate the women of Egypt from the clutches of religious bigotry, at a time when he was seeking to crush an Islamist movement murderously set against British rule in Egypt. How times have changed!
But from the other side of the divide, the language of Osama bin Laden's fiery speech, broadcast on Sunday night, is also reminiscent of words uttered a century ago or more. Again and again, from 1905 onwards in Iran, in far-flung provinces of the Ottoman empire, and elsewhere across an exploited and colonised Muslim world, violent revolutionaries called for the dismantling of local despotisms, with their inextricable ties to foreign vested interests.
In a determined attempt to pin all the blame for the recent terrorist outrages on one man - thereby giving him, in the eyes of thousands of desperate people, heroic Lone Ranger status and giving themselves the easy task of flogging a dead donkey in response - the US and Britain ignore a simple fact at their peril.
Few Muslims worldwide applaud the terror that left several hundred of their own co-religionists maimed or dead, along with all the innocent others. But the vast majority of Muslims want to see the following, and see it soon: a Palestinian state that has East Jerusalem as its capital; an end to the punitive sanctions that have killed more than a million people in Iraq; and the total removal of US military bases in the birthplace of Muhammad.
Perhaps Osama bin Laden, who has yet to claim responsibility for the September 11 attacks and who may be no more than a convenient figurehead to go after, is wanted dead or alive most of all for communicating so unequivocally those three dangerous demands. Dangerous only because they go against every western vested interest, whether in the new world order or the old.
Dangerous, too, because they go against the vested interests of most of the clapped-out regimes of the bitterly-divided and compromised Muslim world, where human rights, civic liberties and democratic movements are brutally and comprehensively repressed, whether by secular authoritarian regimes, or by monarchic or religious ones.
Rana Kabbani is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Paris
Why the US must find a more just perspective
Comment from the Saudi newspaper Arab News
Jamal Khashoggi, deputy editor in chief, in Jeddah
Americans want unconditional condemnation of the horrible attacks that happened in their skies and on their land. They also want total cooperation in their fight against terror according to their own definition of what terrorism is and exactly who the terrorists are. But Saudi Arabia will not give in to such demands.
Saudis tend to link the ugliness of what happened in New York and Washington with what has happened and continues to happen in Palestine. It is time that the United States comes to understand the effect of its foreign policy and the consequences of that policy. But unfortunately such rationalisation is still not part of the American reality.
Now some circles in the US are trying to point fingers at Saudi Arabia. The prime suspect behind the crime was once a Saudi. Many of the alleged hijackers are said to have held Saudi passports. However, here in Saudi Arabia the government does not want the world to see Osama bin Laden as a Saudi or even a dissident. To them he is simply a criminal, an outlaw, who has had nothing to do with Saudi Arabia since 1994.
But for us in Saudi Arabia Bin Laden is not just a name or a video clip. The people of the west coast city of Jeddah especially remember him as a boy at school, a colleague at work, or the neighbour down the block. They think of the soft-spoken young man that they met at a dinner party and who talked with enthusiasm in support of Islamic causes. Most people here in the kingdom are unable to believe that the quiet, intelligent young man from a good family has now become the most wanted criminal in the world.
Many in the west do not know that he was once a member of a prominent, decent Saudi family. It is that family which is now acutely aware of the damage that he has inflicted on the nation's reputation in general and the family businesses in particular. This has made them feel very bitter and angry toward him and his actions. At social gatherings, the Bin Ladens speak about Osama with a mixture of fury and disbelief.
In 1998, Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa, or Islamic ruling, in which he stated that it was permitted to kill both American and British citizens as well as military personnel from those countries because of their support for the state of Israel. Such a fatwa is unprecedented.
Muslims throughout their history never allowed the killing of civilians, even in the midst of wars such as the Crusades. There is no respected Islamic scholar here in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Muslim world who would support such a fatwa.
In Islam, the shedding of human blood is on a list with six other major sins. It seems that Bin Laden has become a revolutionary in a world of his own imagination. He would not hesitate to break any taboo. How did he come to create this fantasyland of terror? It could be said that all our reasoning and justifying are simply excuses to distance ourselves from the terror in the US. Psychologists would probably believe that the entire Saudi community is in denial. This denial would be extended to include not just Bin Laden, but the alleged hijackers as well.
Here in Saudi Arabia, people are grasping at inaccuracies in the evidence presented by the FBI. In the early days of the investigation one of the accused Saudis was found to have been dead for a year before the attack. Another was arrested and then released. Five others were found to be alive and at home with their families. Even though the FBI has now revised the list of accused hijackers, the doubts have been cast and now conspiracy theories abound.
I see this denial as a strong indicator of this country's revulsion and horror at the attacks. No family in Saudi Arabia wants to believe one of their sons could have been responsible for such acts. A Muslim cannot be happy with the suffering of others. Even if this suffering is that of Americans who neglected the suffering of Palestinians for half a century.
The Saudis haven't forgotten that only days before the terrible crimes in New York, there was an art exhibition on the streets of that city in support of what New Yorkers saw as the plight of the Israelis. We can't understand why no one thought of depicting the plight of the Palestinians, who are the occupied community. Despite our unhappiness with such actions of utter ignorance, Saudis have all expressed deep condemnation of the September 11 crimes.
This widespread condemnation did not make the Saudi public and the government officials agree to give America carte blanche which would have allowed it to use Saudi airbases and total Saudi support against the Muslims in the area just because the US is angry. True, America eventually gave assurances that it was only targeting the enemy, which had declared war upon it, specifically Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban. While these assurances were a relief to people, they did not inspire confidence. No one in the Middle East believes that the Israeli lobby in Washington has given up. Israel still has Congress on its side, which always echoes the Israeli position.
This makes people in the Middle East mistrustful of the true agenda of the American government. Of course, the Israelis want America to fight their wars against the people of the Middle East who haven't yet accepted Israel as an occupation force. And they would love to see American planes bombing countries such as Syria, Iran, Iraq and Libya. But if allowed to exploit the situation, the Israelis would not hesitate to widen the circle to include even the friends of the US in the area.
It is obvious that the Saudi public feels that the US has the right to pinpoint and arrest the perpetrators of the crimes on September 11. America was attacked. It is suffering and has the right to know who carried out this cowardly action against its people and retaliate. But peace and security in the US depends on so much more. Washington must start to look at the area with a just perspective. That is necessary to protect the interests of the American people because now the problems of the Middle East have become part of the internal problems of the US.
We can see an opportunity to change these painful events into a way to strengthen understanding between not only Saudi Arabia and the US, but the Muslim world in general and the US and the west. Saudi Arabia is the land of the two holy mosques. It is a place right in the centre of the geography and hearts of those in the Muslim world. It has been a leader in the area for many years, advocating moderation on both the Islamic and Arab fronts.
We have to admit that there is a problem of fanaticism locally. But we are sure that officials are looking into this problem and plan to tackle it with a comprehensive solution that examines its roots while keeping in mind the Islamic foundation of the country. Saudi Arabia will continue to play a role throughout this crisis and after this crisis as a force of moderation for all the Muslims.