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Taming the hegemons by Abid Ullah Jan In response to Thomas L. Friedman’s November 27, 2002 article
To : Leaders of the Western world Dear Sirs, As you approach Thanksgiving and we approach the end of Ramadan, we thought it would be a good time for us to share with you some concerns. Let us be blunt: We are increasingly worried that we are being driven toward a civilisational war. How so? Well, let us point out just a few news stories in recent days, which have been blown out of context to make an excuse for a war between civilisations. Imam Samudra, the Indonesian Islamist, has been accused of masterminding last month's Bali bombing. He has not been convicted. Even if reports of his confession that it was a “holy bomb” that ripped apart that disco is true, still he is an individual. If there is nothing “holy” about a bomb that kills 200 people just because they are foreigners, so could nothing turn a bomb into “Ramadan present”, as one of the US air force officers chalked on a bomb for targeting Iraqi Muslims. If that could be one lone officer’s wish, “Holy bomb” in Bali could also be a lone Imam’s description. Then we are forced to read well-publicized stories about Bonnie Penner, a young U.S. missionary nurse at a prenatal clinic in Sidon, Lebanon, which provided care for needy Palestinians and Lebanese. Of course killing her is a gruesome and unacceptable act. However, to argue that she was only shot for who she was is wrong. Muslims die in scores on a weekly basis simply for who they are is enough to justify occupation of their lands, repressing them from generation to generation and killing them with no remorse of links to codes of humanity and civilized conduct. There is no doubt that Azmi Abu Hilayel, whose son Na'el strapped himself with dynamite and blew up an Israeli bus with school kids, was quoted as saying: “I thanked God when I heard that my son had died in an operation for the sake of God and the homeland.” Of course the God of Islam does not bless indiscriminate killing but it is wrong to equate Israeli soldiers killing dozens of Palestinian children with killings as a result of “suicide” bombing by Palestinians. God does not bless Israeli killing but He definitely approves and blesses resistance to occupation and oppression. Analysts such as Thomas L. Friedman may not hear Israeli generals, parents or rabbis thanking God their sons could kill Muslim kids. The reason one side thanks God and the other does not is simple: one has the power, the other does not. One can run in tanks, helicopters and F-16 planes at any time it may wish to kill a few Palestinian enemies. The other, however, plans and waits for an opportunity and thanks God when it has it. As far the pride over and inciting violence goes, Israeli’s are not far behind the few Muslim clerics quoted by your press time and again. Didn’t Rabin order to kill bones of Palestinians in 1995? (1) Don’t you see Israeli soldiers taking pictures with dead Palestinians? Did the Israeli rabbi Munir Lao not hail the killing of Palestinian children and youth by the Israeli settlers? Did the Israeli rabbi Ovadia Youssef not describe the Arabs as “snakes that should be killed”? He said: “The Palestinians should be killed, especially in Jerusalem, because they are like ants and when the Messiah (Christ) comes he will disperse the Arabs.” (2) Did one of the most important Israeli Rabbi, Mordekhai Elyaho, not justify stealing of Arab properties as recently as October 26, 2002? (3) And, did the spiritual leader of Israel's Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, not forbid “to be merciful” to Arabs? Didn’t he order: “You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.” (4) Why shall countless statements like these be individual views but any such statement from amongst the Muslims is voice of a “harsh fundamentalists” who have dominated the “decent moderates”? The Americans had two marines shot in Kuwait, a country they helped rescue from Saddam, and they saw one of their top aid officials in Jordan killed in his front yard for a similar “crime” – being an American in the Muslim world. This killing is wrong but could not outweigh the deaths of more than twelve thousand Afghans since October 7, 2001 and millions of Iraqis since 1990, just because they are Muslims and happen to be living under governments which the US propped up in the first place and then decided to overthrow with all the available force at its disposal. Thousands of people are getting killed in Algeria, Chechnya, Kashmir and elsewhere not because all of them are terrorists but because they are Muslims and any excuse is good enough to justify their massacre. You say all this is happening because of a deeply intolerant strain of Islam that is a response to your failing states, squandered oil wealth, broken ideologies (Nasserism) and generations of autocracy and illiteracy. We say it is not only due to your support Israeli aggression, continued occupation and repression but also due to your support of kingdoms, autocracies and military dictatorships around the world. It is the US forces who restored the undemocratic regime of the Kuwati ruling family. It is the American forces which are protecting the House of Saud from being toppled. It is the US money that is keeping Egyptian dictator in power. It is the American support that helped Pakistani dictator extend his rule another five years. We are sure that there is no rise among our midst of armed, angry and harsh fundamentalism. We think there is a limit to duplicity and double standards. When pushed against the wall, when discovered that there is no end to western hypocrisy – under which Israel is given arms worth 2.5 billion at the same time when an anti-Israel Muslim state is being disarmed by force – everyone starts considering offense as the best defense. No matter how much analysts such as Brink Lindsey of the Cato Institute may call memorization of the Holy Qura’an “rote memorization of ancient texts”, no matter how the focus of the message of Islam is twisted to present it as “anti-women”, the Western suppression of critical inquiry into their double standards, dissent of their policies, resistance against subjugation of Muslims will only grow with time. Introduction of a few opportunist, self-proclaimed “moderates” cannot prove the civilisational decline of Islam. Any attempt at creating classes such as “decent, but passive, Muslim center” and “harsh fundamentalism” would succeed but only temporarily. Those who are considered as “intolerant bigots” are those who lose their temper, but it doesn’t mean that the rest do not share their views and they will not stand by Islam if it came to the more open confrontation with Islam. Publicly distancing oneself from those Christians who smear Islam with a broad brush does not guarantee an all-out private war on weakening Muslim states at any cost. Regular denunciation of “bigot Christians” by your “moderate majority” is no answer to the same sources justifying your double standards and unjust foreign policies. The approval, for instance, for going to war with Iraq without even knowing Iraq’s crime or even just the whereabouts of Iraq is the weakness of your society. Those who have read history know that that your Civil War is different than the war people like Thomas Friedman want to ignite “within Islam”. You must not urge Muslims to cut each other’s throat. No one among us is taking us back to the Dark Ages. At present is the Darkest Age of Islam, not the past, because we are quick to support the US war on Iraq and Afghanistan but have no guts to stand for the rights of the Palestinians, all of whom in a few months time will have been strip searched by the Israeli soldiers. It is because we do not have the will; we do not have the courage, the knowledge, the strength that we used to have in our “Dark Ages” – the Dark Ages, when memorizing Qura’an was not “rote memorization of ancients text” to us. It was a time when there were no moderates and fundamentalists among us; when we didn’t consider teachings of Islam as tools for “subjugating women”. Friends, unless you stop promoting a war within Islam, there is going to be a war between our civilizations. We're just one more American occupation of a Muslim country away from that. So let's dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance and insanity at the policy levels in Western capitals so we can preserve our good relations with common man in the streets of Europe and America. Sincerely, Muslims without any tag
Notes (1) Reporter Mark Leff, CNN World News, November 5, 1995 (2) “Israeli rabbis call for killing the Arabs”, Palestine-Israel Politics, July 28, 2001 (http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/010728/2001072817.html) (3) http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/021026/2002102611.html (4) “KILL, KILL THE ARABS!” BBC Online, Tuesday, 10 April 2001, 16:01 GMT 17:01 UK, “Rabbi calls for annihilation of Arabs”, in a sermon delivered on Monday, April 10, to mark the Jewish festival of Passover.
The author is Executive Director of Independent Centre for Strategic Studies and Analysis (ICSSA – www.icssa.org) in Pakistan. His latest book “A War on Islam?” (www.maktabah.net and www.universalbookshops.com) is just released in the UK.
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