COMMENT Myanmar monks'
message to Muslim extremists By
Mark LeVine
I still remember that sunny
June morning when I sat transfixed in front of a
television in the lobby of my hotel in Denver,
Colorado. It was my cousin's wedding, but I could
not get very excited about it, because on the
hotel's giant projection television screen, was a
young man, about my age, standing in front of a
column of tanks, risking his life in defense of
the non-violent struggle for democracy that had
rocked China during the previous two months.
I stood breathless, my body every bit as
tense as when I'd find
myself in the midst of
violence in Baghdad or Gaza years later, until
“tank man” was dragged away by onlookers from the
main boulevard of Tiananmen Square. The young man
standing against those tanks (also known as the
"unknown rebel" because his identity was never
discovered) became a symbol for heroic non-violent
protest in the face of extreme government
oppression. In the United States, he inspired a
generation of college students, like me, to become
involved in organizations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch, and to use
our education to work for peace, human rights and
democracy across the globe. But while I and
millions of other Americans and Europeans hoped
"tank man's" courage would spark a democratic
transformation in China, in the Israeli occupied
territories, which I would visit not long after
the Tiananmen Square massacre, things looked quite
different. Already in its second year, the
Palestinian intifada had been marked by
innumerable incidents that were equal in their
bravery, and foolhardiness, to the actions of the
young man in Beijing. Men and women, young and
old, regularly stood in front of Israeli tanks and
bulldozers that came to destroy their homes or
orchards as part of the deepening Israeli
occupation of the territories.
Much of it
was caught on film; some episodes were even
broadcast on American television. Which is why my
Palestinian friends didn't hold out much hope for
China's unknown rebel: they knew exactly how
events would play out. No matter how peaceful and
courageous the protests, they almost never
dissuaded the tanks and bulldozers from completing
their tasks or crushing opposition to government
policies.
While the Palestinian intifada
was symbolized by the violent images of young men
slinging stones at soldiers, it was for the most
part a non-violent resistance, comprised of dozens
of marches, sit-ins, strikes and similar acts of
mass civil disobedience every day, that together
fostered the emergence of what would become the
Arab world's most advanced civil society.
Sadly, this dynamic would change as the
uprising wore on. The lack of success from the
largely non-violent strategies adopted by the
intifada's leadership emboldened more militant
groups such as Hamas to make violence (although
not yet suicide bombings) the dominant method of
resistance. This was precisely what Israel wanted,
because it allowed the Israeli defense forces to
hit back with even more violence, beating the
Palestinians into submission by the time Iraq
invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
At least in
China, the death of the democracy movement was
accompanied by a decade of economic and social
opening. Realizing the precariousness of their
position, the country's leaders embarked on a path
of development that, whatever the environmental
and social costs that have become apparent in
recent years, brought hundreds of millions of
people into the middle class while offering
unprecedented personal and social freedom to the
average Chinese citizen.
For their
suffering during the intifada, Palestinians got a
peace process, "Oslo", which only worsened their
economic, territorial and political situation. The
Muslim world at large saw continued
authoritarianism, topped by unparalleled American
power after the first Gulf War. In good measure -
but not solely - feeding off this reality, global
terrorism as epitomized by al-Qaeda took root and
spread, weed-like, across the Muslim world and
beyond.
Extremism over
tolerance At the same time as extremism
grew, however, the image of "tank man", and of the
many brave Palestinian peace activists and Arab
democracy activists who were standing up to the
force of their rulers or occupiers inspired a
generation of intellectuals and political
activists to lay the foundation for the civil
society movements across the Arab world. But it
was hard to break the cycle of violence that took
root in the failure of non-violence to achieve
real change. As a senior Hamas official explained
to me when I challenged him on the usefulness of
terror as a method of ending the occupation, "We
know the violence doesn't work, but we don't know
how to stop." Nothing else worked, either.
Today, at a pivotal moment in the
so-called “war on terror”, the Buddhist monks of
Myanmar provide a much needed example to the
Muslim world of how concerted, well-organized
non-violence can shake even the most despotic
political system and foreign occupations to their
roots. Political and social activists across the
Middle East are as inspired by the bravery of the
red-robed monks as television-viewers in the US or
Europe. But equally important, they're waiting to
see if the West actually does something more than
offer empty words of support for Myanmar’s people
in their time of suffering.
Unlike Islam,
Americans and Europeans have few if any negative
stereotypes to overcome when engaging the Buddhist
world of Southeast Asia. If we can't translate
sympathy into political action in Myanmar, if
Chinese, Indian and European investors continue to
scramble over the bodies of the hundreds of dead
protesters and President George W Bush once again
backs enlightened rhetoric with toothless
policies, what chance is there that the West, or
the world more broadly, will do anything to
support democracy or peace activists in Egypt,
Pakistan, Palestine and other Muslim countries?
From his cave in the no-man's land of the
Hindu Kush, Osama bin Laden is surely cheering on
the generals in Yangon. He knows that the monks
are a far greater threat to al-Qaeda than the CIA.
Across the Middle East and Africa, al-Qaeda is
regrouping and growing, fed not merely by an
irrational hatred of the United States and the
West more broadly, but by the rational assessment
by millions of Muslims that they will never win
freedom or justice through non-violent means,
because the world's powers will continue to put
their economic and strategic interests - which are
tied to the existing system and its local leaders
- ahead of supporting the systemic transformation
of the world's economy and political system that
would be necessary to bring about real democracy
and peace.
As so many Muslim friends have
complained to me, "The US talks the talk of
supporting democracy and peace, but you never walk
the walk." The Myanmar monks are walking the walk,
and in so doing offer a direct and poignant
example to followers of Hamas and other militant
Muslim groups that violence is not the only or
even the best way to win freedom. But they'll only
succeed with our help. The question is, what are
we, all of us, in Karachi and Dubai as well as
London and Seattle, willing to sacrifice for the
monks of Yangon, and their comrades across the
Muslim world? The fate of the "war on terror"
depends in good measure on how we answer this
question.
Mark LeVine, PhD, is a professor
in the department of history, University of
California-Irvine, and author of Why They Don’t
Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil
(Oneworld, 2005) and Heavy Metal Islam: Rock,
Religion and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam
(Random House/Verso, forthcoming).
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