| |
COMMENTARY
Single-minded
simple-mindedness
By Ehsan Ahrari
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks,
many journalists and commentators have made a career out
of attempting to find the answer to the burning question
of the era: "Why do they hate us?" But as much as I have
tried to understand growing anti-Americanism worldwide,
I must admit that I am troubled by the attempts of some
to locate the center of anti-Americanism in the Muslim
world. I believe the attempt to be condescending -
unwittingly, perhaps, but condescending nevertheless -
and often permeated by simplistic extrapolations.
At the outset, let me establish a number of
premises underlying my arguments. I love the United
States. This is my chosen home. The world of Islam is a
part of me, since I am a product of it. So, I know
something about both worlds. I believe that the American
promise of democracy, equality, and technological
achievement is an alternative that Muslim masses must
consider emulating, while they are struggling in their
own idiosyncratic ways to overthrow the unjust,
anachronistic and despotic rulers in their respective
countries. In this sense, I share and endorse
wholeheartedly the common criticisms of the Islamic
societies. I also share Americans' enthusiasm for
democracy for the world of Islam, even though I envision
a type of democracy that is more reflective and
representative of the socio-political realities of those
regions.
At the same time, however, I do not
believe that Osama bin Ladin represents anything about
the world of Islam, except that he claims to be a
representative of the Wahhabi puritanical creed. I
believe that the Wahhabi creed is in dire need of
revisiting and debate by a whole slew of Muslim scholars
who also know something about, and wholeheartedly
believe in, the principle of tajdeed
(reinterpretation or reform).
There is little
doubt that Wahhabi Saudi schools and their counterparts
in Pakistan have been perpetuating the militant notion
of jihad. Since the implosion of the "godless"
Soviet Union, the United States has become a focus of
their criticism and activities. Undoubtedly, the
autocratic Muslim regimes have turned a blind eye to the
anti-Western teachings of these schools. But the fact is
that anti-Westernism is not a recent phenomenon of the
Islamic (indeed, Third World) countries. The end of the
Cold War produced two highly contentious theses in the
West - "the end of ideology" authored by Francis
Fukuyama and "the clash of civilizations" thesis of
Samuel Huntington. Put simply, Fukuyama's argument was
that, with the implosion of the Soviet Union and the
defeat of communism, there were no more battles left or
victories to win by Western liberal secular democracy.
By implication, all the remaining ideologies had the
choice of either being radically altered in order to
accommodate the Western liberal democratic tradition, or
be subsumed under its rising tide.
For
Islamists, this was an offensive proposition, for they
also were convinced about the ultimate truth and eternal
correctness of their religion.
For Huntington,
the post-Cold War struggle may best be described as a
clash between Islam, which he described as "militant"
and "aggressive", and the West. This reductionistic
point of view was just that: a point of view of a social
scientist who never studied Islam as a theology, but was
too eager to draw wrong conclusions after selectively
looking at a few politico-social patterns. He never drew
such a wrong-headed conclusion about Christianity, even
though it can be argued that its followers were
responsible, most recently, for two world wars,
resulting in millions of deaths. It is true that a lot
of violence has been perpetrated in the name of Islam,
but quite a bit of such "evidence" can also be used to
similarly malign Christianity. However, in the West, all
those who had similar intellectual leanings, to start
with, accepted the Huntingtonian argument as "fact".
Combine Fukuyama's thesis with Huntington's
clash of civilization thesis, which was seen all over
the Islamic world as grotesquely anti-Islamic, and you
will begin to realize how the world looked from the
other side. Islamist groups became focused most intently
on Huntington's highly publicized thesis, in order to
make their own point about the "anti-Islamic" and
"Islamophobic" character of the West in general, and
especially that of the United States. So, reasons for
anti-Westernism or anti-Americanism in the world are
more diverse and complex, and are not limited to the
role of Wahhabi schools, the Saudi- funded charities, or
the presence of authoritarian rule in almost all Muslim
countries, even though those variables definitely made
their contributions to it.
Unlike commentators
who persistently claim that Muslims formulate the
predominant group that is swept by anti-Americanism, I
believe that anti-Americanism is an across-the-board
phenomenon of contemporary world affairs. As regrettable
as it has been, it reflects a number of realities
involving the United States.
First and foremost,
as the most powerful military nation in the world, one
that often uses morality as one of the primary driving
forces for its foreign and defense policy, the US has
become the focal point of attention, scrutiny and
criticism worldwide by those who seem to think that the
practice of double standards is okay by the rest of the
world, but not by the US.
Second, the Bush
administration's unflinching practice of unilateralism
has created an ample pool of resentment toward it,
especially in Europe, where the chief driving forces
behind the emerging new superstate - ie, the European
Union - are heavy reliance on international law,
cooperative diplomacy and multilateralism. It has been
argued by some (Robert Kagan, among others) that
powerful nations frequently behave as if they are living
in Mr Hobbes' neighborhood rather than in Mr Rogers' (a
popular children's educational TV series in the United
States).
Third, the September 11 attacks, and
the United States' preference for militaristic solutions
to the scourge of global terrorism, has become one more
reason why that approach is regarded in many corners of
the world as overly uni-dimensional and simplistic.
Fourth, while post-Taliban Afghanistan lingers
on as a basket case, the US, instead of rebuilding it as
a peaceful and economically prosperous place, has become
focused on similarly dismantling the current regime in
Iraq, and then moving on to other more pressing
strategic priorities that would then emerge. There is
fear in the areas contiguous to Iraq that, like the
post-Taliban Afghanistan, the post-Saddam Iraq would
continue to be a place of enormous human suffering,
thereby giving birth to even worse tyrants and
terrorists than Saddam and bin Ladin.
More to
the point, anti-Americanism is not limited to the world
of Islam. Why, for example, were so many protestors
demonstrating against the US in Davos, Switzerland,
during the meeting of the World Economic Forum this past
January? I am sure most of those protestors were not
Muslims.
My advice, then, to those who would
pronounce simple verdicts on the "Islamic world" is the
same that I would give myself regarding complex topics:
do your research, visit the area, talk to people, and
when you write, remember that the Middle East is a land
familiar with the terrible consequences that come from
making simple miscalculations about others' feelings and
intentions. For a shining example of this phenomenon,
one need look no further than Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and Saddam Hussein just before the initiation
of the Iran-Iraq war of 1981. Or the United States just
before the first Gulf War in 1991. In the final
analysis, the Middle East has a special way of making
all of us eat humble pie.
Ehsan
Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based
independent strategic analyst.
(©2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies,
or to submit a letter to the editor.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
