JEDDAH, 6 December — The effects of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States will not wither away and the unfolding events will pose a threat to future relations between the Muslim world and the West but this would not generate into war between the two civilizations as professed by some, a French jurist and lecturer who heads an organization promoting dialogue between Muslim and Western worlds has said.
Professor Francis Lamand, president of Islam and the West, a non-governmental organization based in Paris, described the attacks in New York and Washington as an earthquake saying its aftershocks would not subside by the passage of time. He said it is the duty of both the Muslim world and the international community to address the root causes of that lead to this violent eruption.
"It is an earthquake, a volcano whose effects can not be erased by time. We should not be misled by the thought that it will just go away. It is the duty of the international community to ensure that the tendency toward violence should be avoided in future, it is the duty of the Muslim world to recall the fundamental principles of Islam, which are not in contract to those of the West and it is the duty of the Western community to have a more objective look at Islam rather than discredit it and give free hand to the encourage of prejudices (against Islam) as portrayed by the media," Dr. Lamand said in an interview with Arab News.
Explaining the reason behind such muted reaction, he said first the dramatic events took place in the United States and not in the European mainland and second the Muslim community in Europe demonstrated a notable degree of calm and even-mindedness as well as a noteworthy maturity.
"At no time did Muslims in Europe associated the Sept. 11 events to events of an Islamic nature thus highlighting the fact that the Islam of the book is a religion of peace, tolerance and compassion. The imams did a concerted effort as did the French and British leaders in denouncing any attempt to crate confusion. I would like to underline the outstanding role of rector of the grand mosque of Paris, Dr. Dalil Boubakeur, who has done a lot to reject the danger of amalgamation and to contribute to convincing the French Muslim community, as the pioneer community in Europe, to uphold the principle of the Qur’an and prevent any mishaps."
Asked if the US-led war against international terrorism, including strikes against Afghanistan and other measures against Muslim countries and organizations, is indeed a war between the West and Islam as some have described the unfolding events, Dr. Lamand said the question is very sensitive and has become a matter of concern to many especially for his association, Islam and the West.
"This is especially the case because for the last 20 years the association has been working vigorously in favor of rapprochement between Islam and the West in religious value as well as cultural, social and economic values. I may ad that when we established our association in February 1980 with the objective and mission of acting to the better understanding between the two worlds, the public opinion in Europe followed us with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism.
We felt the need to establish bridges between the two parties rather than seeing Islam and the West confronting each other and viewing one an other as a threat."
He said Muslims and Westerners are aware of the great potentials of shared values and this is the reason why his organization has been fighting for the past 20 years without being understood whether in Western countries or in certain Muslim countries.
"Today we are in the forefront of carrying out this mission. The conflicting and aggressive vision of the two sides witnessed throughout the history of the two civilizations was the result of certain well-known lobbies and the destructive role of the media. We were right in alerting the world to such wrong notions and perceptions. What we feared has happened today. If all the bridges we wished to build have been built we wouldn’t have reached this point. As a figure who have devoted my life to this struggle I can say that I regrettably felt in the Sept. 11 incidents a danger threatening the future of relations between Islam and the West."
The image of Islam needs to be restored in the West, he said, adding his organization is planning two major conferences in Europe and the US, mostly in Spring, in cooperation with various international organizations, Muslim and non-Muslim. "The initiative has met with immense interest from both sides. Our experience over the past 30 years of the relationship between Islam and the West gives us the privilege of becoming the frontline organizer as we have been in the past.’
Dr. Lamand ridiculed the theory of clash of civilizations preached by Samuel Huntington describing it as a false prophecy and its proponent as a false prophet. The decadence of any civilization, he said, can be detected through various indicators. One of the most revealing is the declining of the prophecy in general and the emergence of false prophets. There has been one such false prophet whose name is Samuel Huntington who proclaimed a clash of civilizations.
"In my capacity as university lecturer, author and specialist on Islam who has been living in the Muslim world for the last 30 years, I still failed to understand how the vision of this false prophet could have seduced so many minds. I shall let you know why. It is because this false prophecy does not hold water when you analyze it and what happened on Sept. 11 has nothing to do with it."
Huntington believes that war in inevitable between Islam and the West because Western values as embodied in individualism, liberalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the reign of law, democracy are all incompatible with the Muslim culture as well as with Confucianism, Hinduism, Japanese and Buddhism cultures.
"This pessimistic and fatalistic view of the conflict of civilization has seduced certain observers who have not been sufficiently attentive to the development of the Islamic-Christian dialogue.
The councils of the Vatican have been working for the benefit of a true rapprochement between Islam and the West. This is the first sign that negates this false prophecy.
This however did not prevent many analysts from trying to establish a relationship between the Sept. 11 attacks and this prophecy without thoughtful thinking or thorough analysis of events.
They thus ignored the convergence of the moral value shared by Islam and the West, issues that both stem from a joint Abrahamic foundation based on the unicity of God, the calls for transcending oneself, the call for spirituality and the sacredness of the human being and the respect or others, for intra-community solidarity, for mutual support.
"The second point that refutes the false prophecy on the so-called war between Islam and the West is the shape in which the two worlds are emerging. No one can ignore or deny that the Islam of the book is a religion of peace, tolerance and universal fraternity. It is lived and practiced by the immense majority of the Muslim word numbering over one billion people."
Dr. Lamand spoke of "so-called specialists in Islamology" whom he said have dramatized today’s events to the extent they have come to see in these events a declaration of war between Islam and the West.
"These so-called specialists have not experienced or tested any form of Islam other than the Islam they have lived from a distance in the West. These people have never left their counties to come and visit Islam in its base in Central Asia, South East Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. We believe there is no war between Islam and the West and there is no risk for such a war. The two worlds have been living side by side for decades and have established a mechanism for cooperation. It is rather an opportunity for an irreversible dialogue."
The eruption that took place on Sept. 11 and afterwards was driven by a strong current and Dr. Lamand cited a number of factors of political, social and economic nature led by the continued.
"First there was retorting against the injustice that has been meted continuously on the Palestinian people. This is a factor of physical nature that mobilized up to the point of exacerbating Arab conscious and Muslim sensitivity and which at the same time posed a challenge to Israel and the United States. The Arab and Muslim world continues to express outrage and indignation over the fact that Western countries seem only to come alive when misfortunes afflict certain people. The massacre of Muslims in Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine has given rise to no feeling of conscious in the Western world, why is it that the US, the defender of justice and liberty, do not place the uncontested power to the service of the human cause? There is also a reaction of rejection by a Muslim minority concerning Western values which reveal a decadence of the West and constitute a threat to Muslim values. There is also globalization, which is viewed as a new form of, capitalistic and colonial oppression that is likely to endanger the cultural identity of the disfavored and poorer countries and further aggravates the imbalance between North and South. This opens the way for an extreme section of Islam to revolt against injustice. In this case extremism becomes a response to the globalization challenge and a haven for those who feel they would be targeted victims. From Algeria to Afghanistan poverty, misery and desperation are the fertilizer that gives rise to extremism."
Asked about his view as a jurist of what the US and its allies are doing in Afghanistan in the name of the war against international terrorism, Dr. Lamand said he has his own reservations on such intervention. He said one does not necessary have to be fully convinced of the United Nations resolution, which justified the US intervention as legitimate self-defense.
"One can only talk about legitimate defense when there is a country that has been aggressed and a country that is an aggressor. We know which is the aggressed country and we very respectfully express out sympathy with the victims. But the question is: Where is the aggressor country?"
He said instead of talking about the legitimacy he would certainly have preferred if there has been talk about a reprisal.
"Here one is led to ask are we (acting) within the legality and the law or within a state of fait accompli. The question is of a serous nature because it may institutionalize such intervention at the expense and to the detriment of countries whose only fault would have been to give shelter to one or several terrorist or a terrorist system. Also, by continuing the strikes during the blessed month of Ramadan, the coalition countries have given preference to the military strategic interest over religious conviction.
This in my view could be understandable but at the same time fully regrettable. Even in the Middle Ages in the West sacred events and holidays were respected. This was a canonic rule where they enforced what was called the divine truce where the belligerent parties would refrain from any war hostilities for 40 days. By maintaining the strikes during Ramadan, a new precedent has been set."
