|
A lecture delivered to the Gulf
Cultural Club on 11th September 2003 By *Dr
Abdel Wahab El-Affendi and Dr David Hoile.
Introduction:
Today is the second anniversary of the twin towers
debacle. There are a lot of people globally who may mark
September in a different way. It was also in September
that Salvador Allende’s government was eradicated from
the fact of this earth. September is marked for the
Palestinians in a different way because there were
thousands who were killed in this particular month and
no one lights a candle for them. There are many
anniversaries to be marked. It is not just September 11th
but September 11th is obviously a poignant
occasion for us to be discussing different issues
related to this particular event that took place two
years ago. Today’s topic is Muslim and Western
perspectives two years after 11th September
and wo prominent scholars will be making a presentation.
Dr David Hoile:
The events of 9/11 had numerous effects. One of the
immediate observations, it is a very specific one but it
runs centrally, is that after those events the world has
changed. Before the events 9/11 2001 the world had a
structure. It was only one decade away from the cold war
which was followed by the reality of a unipolar
political world dominated by one superpower.
It is actually
safe to say now that we live in a very unpredictable
environment. The title of the lecture is Western
perspectives two years after September 11 and it is
ultimately very difficult now to talk of one Western
perspective. Immediately after the events of September
11 there was a unified approach towards the United
States. I think it is now safe to say that there are
very great divisions following subsequent events.
The European
Union has had experience of terrorism as has Britain.
There are ways of containing terrorism. There are now
many people in Europe, in this country and
internationally who would say that Bush has over reacted
to the events of September 11th. There is
also considerable criticism of his policies even within
the USA itself. Events in Iraq during the last few
months have created a very sharp division within the
European Union.
The events of
September 11th have also fuelled and
encouraged some of the less attractive features of
American political life. There are a number of very
ideological people in government in Washington DC who
are in a position to advance what is essentially an
ideological viewpoint, especially in relation to the
Middle East. I speak as a conservative. It is easy to
recognise ideological features in the Bush
administration. I have had contact with a number of
conservatives within the states and one of the features
is that over the last ten years under the Bush election
victory the ideological right in the States was out of
government – out of power. But a number of very
committed ideologues are now in power and are
determined to use that power for their own policy
reasons. The policy on Iraq was essentially a result of
9/11.
The limits of
ideology have also come to be seen. America’s policy in
Iraq is stagnating. The attempts to involve the UN are
simply an indication of that. The idea of invading Syria
has been on hold very distinctly. One of the other
dimensions that has emerged after 9/11 is the
anti-terrorism policies that the Bush administration
embraced.
There are also
some positive aspects from these horrific events. There
is no doubt now that the people in the United States are
very much more aware of the rest of the world. They
have been made aware that American foreign policy is not
universally liked and in some cases detested intensely.
That is no bad thing.
There has also
been a new interest among Americans in Islam. Sales of
the Qur’an reached all time levels in the months after
9/11/ Mr Bush and Mr Blair have gone out of their way to
extol Islam as a religion of peace. That perhaps is no
bad thing. There is a lot more awareness of Islam and
its teachings.
The events of
September 11 also revealed an intelligence failure on
the part of the American government. It has been brought
home to us how unprepared American intelligence was with
regard to the spectrum of Islamic extremism. There was a
distinct shortage of Arab linguists and American
specialists on the Middle East. Robert Bear published a
book one year after September 11 and exposed the extreme
shortcomings of American intelligence. In the American
embassies in the Middle East he was the only man who
spoke Arabic. He was the only man who could go out on
the street and provide a snap shot of events in that
country. He pointed out that this was not unusual. This
may now be changing. There should be a lot more Arabists
in American intelligence gathering, more Arabic
speakers. There could be no better way of defusing the
anti-Islamic imagery and superstitions.
September 11 also
made the Americans more aware of how their foreign
policy was a cause of problems. As a result America may
become more constructive in its policies in the Middle
East especially in relation to the Arab-Israeli
conflict. I am not convinced about that but it is a
hope. The Bush administration in part seems to be much
more aware of the need to adopt a long term policy in
defusing tensions and winning over hearts and minds
throughout the world but especially in areas such as the
Middle East. They may realise that as well as solving
the problems in Iraq they have to become more proactive
in issues such as the Arab – Israeli conflict.
These are just a
few snap shots of some of the Western perspectives. One
of the most interesting spinoffs of the last year or two
has been the split between the USA and its foreign
policy and the European Union. There is no doubt that
the European Union has a separate agenda in the
formation of its own foreign policy. European Union
foreign policy in general is going to be far more
consensual. It is going to go for the middle ground.
This means that the European Union will be much more
complex in the years to come as it fleshes out its own
policies in relation to the Middle East and the USA.
This will be one of the fascinating dimensions to look
at in the years to come.
We have also seen
some divisions in Europe on this but I am not sure that
they will outlive the particular political orientations
of the party that governs those countries. Spain’s
stance on Iraq will change after the Aznar government.
9/11 has had the effect some of the extremists may have
wished for. It has divided the UN, it has created
divisions among the Europeans as a whole. It has also
caused considerable division in this country. These are
just a few points we can take up in the questions and
answers.
Dr Abdel Wahab
El-Affendi: Actually when
I saw that I was sharing the forum with Dr David Hoile I
thought he was supposed to give the Muslim perspective
and I was supposed to give the Western perspective given
his connection with my country, Sudan. I think that
the starting point is the very idea that there could be
a Muslim and a Western perspective of events of
September 11 is itself indicative of a deeper
significance of these events. You cannot look at
events in isolation. Everyone tends to look at
September 11th as a watershed event, where
the world before September 11th was something
and the world after was something else.
However if we
look at Britain where there has been a long history of
experience with terrorism we do not hear people speaking
about a Catholic perspective on terrorism and a
Protestant perspective on terrorism even though British
history and psyche is, as we see from the deep
differences over the marches in northern Ireland, very
conditioned to think of Catholicism as a serious threat
because the modern British self identity has been shaped
by the way Britain or the English dominant Anglicans
regard Catholicism – as a kind of other and threat. Most
of the terrorism which Britain has been on the
receiving end of came from northern Irish catholics, but
nobody has been speaking about catholic terrorism. No
British Prime Minister or politician has come out and
said we are actually not against Catholics, we are only
against terrorism. This would be senseless to say. No
one in modern, secular society expects these kind of
political differences to be seen from a religious
perspective.
But immediately after September 11 (even before that
after the Oklahama bombing of 1995 the politicians were
trying to say let us not try to jump to conclusions, let
us not stereotype Islam.
This shows that there is some kind of problem. As a
background to this event there were already some
perceptions of a problem between Islam and Muslims and
the West and America in particular, which also came to
be embodied in a lot of
things, including the laws and the measures taken after
September 11th.
Let us return to Britain and terroism. Even though it is
quite clear fromthe British authorities that it is Irish
catholics who are responsible for the IRA terrorism
there has never been a question of banning Irish
catholics from getting visas to visit Britain. There was
never a move to limit the rights of the catholics in
Britain, they have the right to vote in elections and to
live as British citizens. But immediately after
September 11th and even before that since the mid 1990s
there have been moves to limit the activities of
Muslims. Muslim immigrants in the United States were
targeted and arrested or picked up. Any Muslims with
visa irregularities were arrested and deported even
though they might have American wives.
This relates to two important interlocking aspects: to
a perception of terrorism, the way terrorism has been
looked at, defined and regarded as a phenomenon,
although the official statements coming from Western
European governments and the America government have
been saying we are not targetting Muslims, we are not
targetting Islam, we are targetting terrorism, the
majority of Muslims are not terrorists. They condemn
terrorism.
But the different disposition has been that it is
Muslims who have grievances against the West and these
grievances have been described in terms of problems in
Kashmir, Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya - there
are a lot of grievances and problems and this has
resulted in Muslims being seen as a kind of enemy - as
enemy nationals. For example when Britain or America
was at war with Japan, being a Japanese national was
regarded as being an enemy national. The same was true
about German nationals. That was acceptable legally and
politically. If Britain is at war with Germany than
every German national is considered an enemy national
unless and until the opposite is proven - that he is
not.
In modern history there has never been a Muslim national
but it seems in the background of the thinking of policy
makers in the West his ide was there. They believed
that there is some kind of Muslim national, Muslim was
regarded as an identity, the Muslim is an enemy in a war
between America and some undefined entity at this
moment. This undefined entity is called terrorism. In
the back of the minds of policy makers, FBI, CIA, MI6,
this category potentially embraces almost all Muslims.
So the war on terrorism cannot be understood without
this background. It is as if there is a country which is
at war with America and with the West. This country has
no name but it could be defined loosely as the Muslim
ummah.
What has worsened the situation is that there are two
levels of this conflict. There has been a rise of the
new religious right in America. Most West rnost
politicians are secular, including people like Tony
Blair even though he portrays himself as a religious
man, a Christian. The system is secular and anything
religious is regarded as suspicious. At the same time if
the religion is an alien religion then there is an
additional kind of suspicion.
At the background to this thinking is the view that
religion is irrational and the Muslims are even more
irrational. So the so-called fundamentalists, hardliners
or radicals are the irrational of the irrational.
So with this in mind there is no political way of
dealing with this phenomenon of Islamic terrorism. You
cannot negotiate with these people, there is nothing to
negotiate about, it is either usor them. We have either
to exterminate them or they will exterminate us.
This has created some kind of paranoia if you look at
the statements of men like Blair. You will find that
there is some kind of very deep fear. Even today the
British police are saying that it is inevitable that
there is going to be a suicide bombing in London and it
is almost inevitable that some weapons of mass
destruction like chemical weapons or biological weapons
will be used.
If you believe this there is no way you can prevent it
because there is no way you can talk to the people who
are behind it. You are reduced to irrational measures:
you have to fight an enemy you cannot see, you cannot
reason with and the procedures you adopt are going to be
as irrational as those of the enemy you are talking
about.
But at the same time the politicians seem to also
recognise that the problem
they are dealing with is a political problem. So Tony
Blair said before we can attack Iraq we also have to
look at he Palestinian problem, we have to resolve the
Palestinian problem. We have to improve the situation in
Iraq, we have to move Iraq towards democratic freedoms,
we have to try to improve relations between Islam and
the West. So you have a lot of meetings, a lot of
initiatives we have to create to encourage democracy in
the Middle East.
This is a contradictory discourse. Either there is a
political problem and by resolving the political problem
you can eliminate the threat of terrorism or there is no
political problem. Sometimes it depends on where you
stand. If you look at very vehement Israeli supporters
like Daniel Pipes in America they would say there is no
way to reason with these Arabs, Palestinians or Muslims.
You have to really shoot them and subjugate them and
then you force them to see reason. As long as they have
power they will not see reason. Therefore there is no
reason to talk to Yasser Arafat. You have to really hit
them hard bring them to their knees and then you will
see that these people are barbarians, savages who can
only be dealt with by force.
At the same time there is another language being used.
This compounds the problem of irrationality. It relates
to the way Muslims regard American power at the moment.
There is a very deep mistrust of America and anything it
does in the world. There are reasons for this mistrust
but it confuses the picture because the majority of
Muslims did condemn the September 11 attacks. But the
same majority did not condemn attacks by Hamas in the
Occupied Territories or by Chechnyans in Chechnya.
Here there is a confusion between a righteous cause and
the way to support it but it feeds misconceptions on the
Western side that the war on terrorism is at the same
time a war against Muslims.
Som people cite the fact that a lot of Muslims also
sympathise with Osama Bin Laden for the simple reason
that they want to see America humiliated. When they see
leaders like George Bush, who defy not only the Arab
and Muslim world but the international community and the
United Nations and impose their will on the world they
would lessen their opposition or their condemnation of
terrorism in general and September 11th in particular.
So although can say that September 11 has divided the
world, these divisions were there before. You have to
recongise this. Even from the post cold war era there
has been an inbuilt or a kind of logic being presented.
We have heard it from a number of quarter but people
did not pay attention to it. We heard Samuel
Huntington's clash of civilisations thesis and before
that also took from Bernard Lewis about the roots of
Muslim rage. After NATO's secretary at that time also
said that after the cold war Islamic fundamentalism is a
threat against which NATO has to prepare.
So there was a lot of looking for enemies and pointing
to Islam as a possible enemy. So it was not a big thing
to say yes that is what we have been telling you all the
time. This is exactly what happened. The problem was
seen as a problem with Islam and Muslims. Daniel Pipes
is an extreme case in this regard he has been saying
what the politicians can't say. He can criticise
President Bush for saying that Islam is a peaceful
religion. He said that is wrong - Islam is not a
peaceful religion - the President should not be speaking
about Islam.
Given this situation what can the Muslims do? I think
this is the most important thing for people to think
about. There has been a problem between Islam and the
West. This problem has deep roots in colonialism, in
the continued residual colonialism in Palestine, the
West's support for particular regimes and in the
relationship of exploitation regarding especially oil
and in the other residual colonial issues like Kashmir,
Chechnya and Bosnia – these are the residual colonial
heritage. They continue to create great tension.
The people who are behind September 11th have emerged
from this conflict. They have emerged from this
conflict because the situation in the Middle East has
developed in such a way that the states of the region
became incapable of responding to these challenges. They
tried to liberate Palestine by war but they failed, they
tried to do so by talks and negotiations but they
failed. The state of the Middle East remained
undemocratic.
In this regard a lot of movements emerged from the
people to deal with these crisis: Hamas and Islamic
Jihad in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the other
Palestinian groups and Al Qaeda. You also have Islamic
Jihad in Jordan and in Egypt.
These groups have emerged within countries to deal with
the problems and
they tried to take over the role of the state by waging
war. Not only states can wage war. Groups like Hamas and
Al Qaeda are waging war not against
their own governments to change them but against what
they perceive as the force behind these governments. As
well as there being a failure of states there is also a
failure of peaceful opposition groups which were
supposed to change the situation in the Muslim world for
the better to create stronger communities in the
societies which can go out and meet the challenge.
We are now left with a situation where we are hijacked
by governments which are not representative of the
people and at the same time movements which have also
tried to put us into this kind of war with the West
which we do not want and are not ready for. This is the
wrong way of operating.
We have a responsibility as Muslims to try and look at
our situation and see how we can create conditions
within the Muslim which will be more adaptable to the
challenges which we face. It is pointless to say America
is responsible for our problems and let us go and fight
America. As has been proved by the way the events have
developed this is actually a way of escaping from the
problems. The real problems of Saudi Arabia have not
been created by the presence of American troops. This is
only a consequence of the real problem in Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf and around the area.
I can also say that the problem in Iraq is not the
presence of American troops. The problem is that the
Iraqis have not yet managed to agree among themselves
how to govern their country independently and anyone who
wants to go and fight the Americans before resolving the
problems between Iraqis is doing the same thing Al Qaeda
is trying to do. You will be fighting other Iraqis and
Americans. The same thing happened in Saudi Arabia, you
are fighting the Saudis and the Saudi government and
fighting America at the same time.
There is a problem in the Muslim world. Even people in
the West will not disagree that there is a lot of
unfairness in the international system against Muslims
and the Muslims are still the communities who have been
deprived of their rights either by their own governments
or by foreign powers. But at
the same time we cannot say that the West is the cause
of our problems.
*Dr Abdel Wahab
El-Affendi is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for
the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster and
co-ordinator of the Centre’s Project on Democracy in the
Muslim World. Educated at the Universities of Khartoum,
Wales and Reading, he is the author of Turabi’s
Revolution: Islam and Power in Sudan (1991), Who
Needs an Islamic State? (1991), Revolution and
Political Reform in Sudan (1995), Rethinking
Islam and Modernity (2001) and Conflict and the
Future of Democracy in Sudan (2002). He is a regular
writer in leading journals.
*Dr David Hoile works in the politics holds a degree in
politics and international studies from the University
of Warwick. He has been a member of the Conservative
Party since 1980 and has held national, regional and
local office within the party. His publications include:
Mozambique: A nation in crisis (1989),
Understanding Sanctions (1988), Freedom and the
Armed Struggle in Northern Ireland and South Africa: A
Common Thread and Farce Majeure: the Clinton
Administration’s Sudan Policy 1993 – 2000. |
