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Remaking the Muslim Middle
East
By Ahmad Faruqui
During
last Ramadan, a major battle raged in Afghanistan
between the armies of the United States and the Taliban.
War historian Elliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University
called it the first in a series that would constitute
the next world war. Thus, as this Ramadan draws to a
close, we are about to witness another campaign
involving this time the forces of the US and Iraq. This
may be followed in subsequent years by campaigns against
the forces of Iran, Syria and Libya, according to
neo-conservative writer Norman Podhoretz. Podhoretz does
not want Washington to stop with regime changes, but to
bring about "the long-overdue internal reform and
modernization of Islam".
The struggle for
mastery of the Muslim Middle East, which contains 70
percent of the world's oil reserves, has entered a new
stage. On one side are the Muslim militants who have
three primary objectives: first, to contain Israeli
expansion into the West Bank and Gaza; second, to force
the US to remove its military forces from the Middle
East; and, third, to depose the tyrannical monarchs and
corrupt despots who hold sway in the region. Al-Qaeda,
Islamic Jihad, Hamas and numerous other groups are
united in their pursuit of these objectives. Taking an
extreme interpretation of their religious texts, they
have resorted to committing horrific acts of mass murder
to further their cause.
On the other side is
Washington, with its stated objective of remaking the
region in the mold of Woodrow Wilson. The National
Security Strategy document issued by the White House in
September 2002 says that the US will "wage a war of
ideas to win the battle against international
terrorism", and that it will support "moderate and
modern government, especially in the Muslim world, to
ensure that the conditions and ideologies that promote
terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation". In
this fight, Washington is strongly supported by London.
At the recent NATO summit in Prague, President George W
Bush sought to actively recruit other Western and East
European powers to join this cause.
Ironically,
the terrorists and Washington are ultimately fighting a
common enemy: the governments of the Middle East. Caught
in the crosshairs of this conflict are the pro-Western
governments of Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia, the other Gulf Kingdoms, Tunisia and Yemen. If
they side openly with Washington, they are likely to be
labeled American puppets and face serious internal
pressures. If they don't cooperate with the US, they
could be accused of being in the terrorist camp and be
subjected to sanctions and possibly military attack.
The people who live in the region, caught in the
ensuing game of cat and mouse, have become spectators in
the fight. Over time, as Israeli military atrocities
continue in the occupied territories and as the US gears
up to attack Iraq, the street sentiment in the Muslim
world has begun to shift in an anti-American direction.
The rising tide of anti-Americanism is a major worry to
policymakers in Washington. Hani Hourani, director of
the New Jordan think tank, was recently quoted as saying
that anti-American anger now permeates the Muslim Middle
East, with low-level government officials now talking
the same language as the militant Muslims.
And
it is no longer confined to the Arab world. Elections in
Turkey, a member of NATO and an historical ally of
Israel in the Middle East, have granted an absolute
majority to a party with Islamist ties. Dr Abdullah Gul,
the new prime minister, has served as an economist with
the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank. In a break
with their lackluster performance in past elections, an
alliance of religious parties in Pakistan, the Muttahida
Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), has won the third-largest number of
seats in the National Assembly. Their candidate for
prime minister secured the second-highest number of
seats in the National Assembly. The MMA is expected to
form provincial governments in the two provinces that
border Afghanistan, and have a vocal presence in the
National Assembly. Their leadership is calling for the
withdrawal of American forces from Pakistan. There have
been large-scale protests in Indonesia, the world's
largest Muslim nation, at the arrest of a cleric under
charges related to the Bali bombings.
While
Washington talks about the need to diminish the
underlying conditions that spawn terrorism, its actions
may unfortunately promote anti-Americanism. In the words
of a British field marshal, an attack on Iraq is likely
to "add petrol to the fire". The Bush administration has
suggested that the terrorists are motivated by anger
directed at the US, because it is a wealthy nation and
because it promotes freedom and liberty. The terrorists
are viewed as embittered enemies against whom
conventional deterrence cannot be effective. Such an
explanation is incomplete and misleading. The major
reason that terrorists have struck a responsive chord
with ordinary person in the Muslim world is that in they
have pointed out the double standards in US foreign
policy.
Double standards
In the eyes
of the ordinary American, the US should be the most
admired nation in the Muslim world. After all, it wants
to bring the ideals of Wilsonian liberalism to the
Muslim world: peace, democracy and free markets. While
the US strategy toward the Muslim world is indeed
founded on these ideals, what has led to rampant
anti-Americanism are the double standards that have
attended its implementation.
First, there is a
double standard in removing weapons of mass destruction.
The US has not questioned Israel's right to have them,
because in its view, Israel would only use them in
justifiable self-defense.
Second, there is a
double standard in following UN Security Council
resolutions. There is no pressure on Israel to implement
Resolution 242 of 1967. The US had implicitly
legitimized Israel's illegal 35-year occupation of the
Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza, since it has a right
to have safe and secure borders while other nations that
invade their neighbors have to withdraw immediately.
Within a few months of occupying Kuwait, Iraq was
attacked by a coalition of forces led by the US. But
Israel spent 18 years in Lebanon without inviting much
American rebuke until it was forced to withdraw by the
attacks of the Hezbollah.
When the Israeli Air
Force attacked an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, the UN
Security Council adopted resolution 487. The resolution
condemned Israel for the attack, and noted that Iraq had
applied IAEA safeguards satisfactorily. It opined that
Israel should pay compensation to Iraq, and called "upon
Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under
the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy
Agency". This is unlikely to happen any time in the
foreseeable future, since the US will not place any
pressure on the UN to get Israel to comply with this
resolution.
Third, there is a double standard in
promoting democracy. Most of the repressive regimes in
the Muslim world - the Gulf Kingdoms, Egypt and Jordan -
are propped up by the US. In the early 1990s, when the
FIS Islamist party in Algeria won the national
elections, it was banned because the US suspected that
it would hold no further elections. A few years ago, an
Islamist Prime Minister in Turkey was removed from
office and his party banned by the US-backed Turkish
military. The democratically elected government in
Tehran is viewed with suspicion because it pursues an
independent foreign policy.
Lastly, there is a
double standard in minimizing civilian casualties during
wartime. While American casualties are minimized, those
of the enemy are potentially maximized. American tactics
during the first Gulf War, the air campaign in Kosovo
and the war in Afghanistan show how far the Pentagon has
optimized high-altitude bombing tactics. Once
hostilities commence, Stealth fighters take out enemy
air defenses, followed by B-2 Stealth bomber raids on
key enemy command and control centers. Then special
operations forces on the ground draw in B-52s armed with
laser-guided weapons to take out troop formations and
other strategic targets. At all times, the Predator
unmanned aerial vehicles provides invaluable field
intelligence for spotting targets, and it has recently
demonstrated its capability in Yemen to take out
otherwise elusive targets.
Regardless of the
high technology that is embodied in lethal weaponry, the
level of precision is only as good as the level of
intelligence on the ground. Civilian deaths on the enemy
side are inevitable. Initially, the Pentagon will not
acknowledge them. When they become only too visible,
such as the wedding party in Afghanistan, a comment is
made that enemy militants were using civilians as
shields in terms only too reminiscent of Sharon's forces
in the West Bank. Finally, when public outcry begins to
demand an apology, a statement is issued blaming the
enemy's leadership for all such casualties, since the US
does not target civilians.
All of this boils
down to the following American dictum: if you toe our
line, you will be handsomely rewarded - regardless of
whether you are a democracy, possess weapons of mass
destruction or follow UN resolutions. If you do not toe
our line, you will be attacked and eliminated. While
such edicts have frightened governments of all but a
handful of nations into subservience, they have
emboldened Muslim militants to commit their terrorist
attacks.
As expected, their acts of mass murder
on American soil - carried out in the name of Islam -
have galvanized anti-Muslim forces in the US. A
triangular coalition of forces has emerged, involving
evangelical Christians, neo-conservatives and militants
Jews.
An emerging coalition
Members of
the coalition have now developed a common platform,
which argues that terrorism is not confined to extremist
elements within the Muslim world, but is a logical
outgrowth of the teachings of the Islamic faith. Some of
these ideologues have said the actions of the terrorists
are a confirmation of the Clash of Civilizations
predicted by Harvard's Samuel Huntington. Others have
posited that what we are witnessing is a clash within
Islam itself, between the moderates and the extremists.
Either argument is designed to put the Muslim world on
the defensive.
Ministers and pastors of the
religious right have begun to stigmatize Islam,
attacking everything that Muslims hold sacred and dear.
The conservative Baptist minister Reverend Jerry Falwell
has reviled Prophet Mohammed by calling him a terrorist
and a violent man. "Jesus set the example for love, as
did Moses," Falwell said. "I think Mohammed set an
opposite example."
Reverend Franklin Graham -
the son of Billy Graham who leads 55 million evangelical
Christians - gave the benediction at George W. Bush's
inauguration. He called the Islamic religion "wicked,
violent and not of the same God" on the first of Ramadan
and alleged that the Koran instructs the killing of
infidels. Asked by NBC News to clarify his statement,
Graham repeated his charge that Islam is evil. "It
wasn't Methodists flying into those buildings, it wasn't
Lutherans," said Graham. "It was an attack on this
country by people of the Islamic faith."
In a
similar vein, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has
described Islam on his "700 Club" television program as
a violent religion that wants to "dominate and then, if
need be, destroy". According to Robertson, "the Koran
makes it very clear, if you see an infidel, you are to
kill him." Thus, Islam "is not a peaceful religion that
wants to coexist". In his opinion, Muslims want to
coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if
need be, destroy.
Some have called Islam an evil
religion while others have called it an occult religion.
Some have suggested that Allah is not the God of the
Christians and Jews, forgetting that Arab Christians and
Muslims both use the word Allah, which means God in
Arabic.
In June, Rev Jerry Vines, a former
Southern Baptist convention president and pastor of a
church in Florida, told guests at a pastors' conference
that many of America's problems can be blamed on
religious pluralism. Pluralists "would have us to
believe that Islam is just as good as Christianity, but
I'm here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that Islam
is not just as good as Christianity". In a November 10
broadcast, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart called for the
expulsion of all foreign Muslim university students in
the United States and for profiling of airline
passengers "with a diaper on their head and a fan-belt
around their waist". Of American Muslims, Swaggart said:
"We ought to tell every other Muslim living in this
nation that if you say one word, you're gone."
Such rantings are not confined to evangelical
Christians. Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East
Forum, an organization devoted to strengthening links
between the US and Israel, has called Islam a religion
with nothing functional to offer. Writing in The
Jerusalem Post in May 2000, Pipes said, "The Koran is a
not 'a product of Mohammed or even of Arabia', but a
collection of earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical
materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later
age ... A few scholars go even further, doubting even
the existence of Mohammed." In the November issue of
Commentary, Pipes dismisses assertions by US academics
that Islam is a peaceful religion, and that "jihad may
likewise include defensive engagements, but this meaning
is itself secondary to lofty notions of moral
self-improvement". In his opinion, Osama bin Laden and
other self-proclaimed jihadis understand jihad in
keeping with its practice through 14 centuries of
Islamic history.
Pipes, who has now found praise
for his views on the editorial pages of the Wall Street
Journal, argues that Muslims have a legal compulsion to
expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense
of non-Muslims. He says their goal is "nothing less than
to achieve Muslim domination over the entire world."
The common theme of these critics is that Muslim
armies spread Islam by the sword. They ignore the
barbarism that was displayed by Christian armies during
the Crusades to retake Jerusalem, or the cruelty with
which the Spanish Inquisition treated the Muslims and
Jews of Spain. The neo-conservatives overlook the fact
that Islam arrived in Malaysia, Indonesia and the
Philippines through commerce and trade, not war.
The utterances of the ideologues of the
triangular coalition, however ill informed they might
be, have poisoned the minds of many Americans about the
Muslim world. A US poll conducted a few months ago found
that, White House denials to the contrary, a third of
all Americans now view the entire Muslim world as their
enemy.
The coming war
The Muslim world
has now resigned itself to the inevitability of a US-led
invasion of Iraq. It is no wonder that Arab writers such
as Saudi academic Yusif Makki see a sinister motive
behind the coming US attack on Iraq. He considers this
conflict, and the ongoing conflict in Palestine,
"nothing less than a continuation of the Crusades the
west launched against the Arab world centuries ago."
When attempts to link Saddam Hussein with the
terrorist attacks of September 11 failed, the pundits in
Washington began to talk about the need to prevent him
from arming al-Qaeda with a nuclear bomb, a weapon he
does not even have in his arsenal. Arab apologists such
as Fouad Ajami acknowledge that even though there is no
ideological affinity between the secular Saddam and the
Wahhabi bin Laden, they share a common goal: the
destruction of America. That is sufficient cause for
seeking their elimination.
Playing on this
psychology of fear, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has argued that there is no need to wait for a smoking
gun connecting Saddam with Osama, since one is morally
bound to "connect the dots before something happens". If
the UN inspectors do not find something in Iraq, it is
because Saddam has outwitted them. If they do find
something, he is a liar. In either case, he is culpable
and should be removed from power. Very much aware that
should the UN not authorize military action, the US
would be happy to disarm Saddam unilaterally, Kofi Annan
has chided the US for having "a lower threshold" for
going to war in Iraq than other members of the Security
Council.
Rumsfeld has said that no decision has
yet been taken for proceeding with an attack on Iraq.
This is a significant change in the Pentagon's rhetoric.
Just a few months ago, the official line was that the
president had no war plans on his desk. General Tommy
Franks has now presented a war plan involving about
250,000 US troops, according to the New York Times, with
hostilities to commence no later than February. Former
Secretary of State George Schultz, whose words are
regarded as "tracer fire" by US journalists, has said
that he would be surprised if military action had not
commenced by the end of January.
In a widely
read political cartoon script, White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer is asked whether Iraq really poses a serious
threat to the US. After all, it has not been able to
shoot down a single US warplane after 11 years of
around-the-clock practice. While he waits to respond,
one of the members of the press corps chimes in: "Maybe
we should ask one of our fliers to fly slower." Another
chimes in: "Yea, let's ask him to cut off his engines."
Finally, a third one says: "That's right. Then we will
have our provocation."
Conservative activist Pat
Buchanan cites an account of a disturbing conversation
between Congressman Tom Lantos, ranking Democrat on the
House International Affairs Committee, and Colette
Avital, a visiting Knesset member. Lantos gave this
assurance to Avital: "My dear Collette, don't worry. You
won't have any problem with Saddam. We'll be rid of the
bastard soon enough. And in his place we'll install a
pro-Western dictator, who will be good for you and good
for us."
This "pro-Western dictator," said
Lantos, will rule for "five or six years," and "after
America gets rid of all the regimes of evil, it will go
straight to Syria and tell young Assad that's what will
happen to him if he doesn't stop supporting terrorism."
Rumsfeld has discounted concerns that the war
with Iraq would lead to a world war by saying it would
take no longer than "five days, five weeks or five
months". However, many analysts fear that the war could
easily become a great war. As it listens to the
neo-conservatives calling for a great war to remake the
Muslim Middle East, Washington would be well advised to
heed the words of British historian A J P Taylor,
"Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able
to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great
Power is not to fight one."
(©2002 Asia Times
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