America is at with Iraq, and we are left to pick up the pieces. This has been the most stressful year for the Arab and Muslim world, especially for those of us who have tried to understand why we are bombarded by one accusation after the next.
The trend, it seems, is a mixture of resistance against outside force — or what many here call “threats” and “accusations” — and what psychologists would term an identity crisis. Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the role of Arab or Muslim journalists has tended to waver between withholding the truth — the truth that hurts — and apologizing for the sad state of who we are. We are treading a very thin line.
We were itching to explain the reasons that led to the crisis in the first place, yet we knew all too well that America would dismiss all such efforts as excuses. After all, US editorials remind us that we have not been mindful of our own problems, we live under repressive regimes, and to top it all, we have the audacity to blame others for our own mistakes.
And so the war of words began. It was as though we were stripped naked for all to pry. Bernard Lewis — “one of the worst offenders in the cultural war against Islam,” according to Edward Said’s book “Covering Islam: how the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world” — clearly brands the entire Arab populace as fanatic, jealous fools who foment destruction in the hope of bringing down the values of a rich nation, America.
Where in all his reports does Lewis take into account the lives of moderate Muslims? Not the tribal liars, not the enraged warmongers, but the regular folk who try to make a living and lead peaceful lives? Why do most reports after Sept. 11 go off-track when describing “the threat of Islam” — followed usually by sound bites regarding the oppression of women.
To heap misconceptions on an already abused religion, “Islamic extremism” or “Muslim extremism” have now been reduced to “Islamism.” The dangerous connotations of the word lie in the repetition of the term to an already ignorant American public. When Islam and Islamism overlap, the true essence of Islam will eventually be overshadowed.
Our first battle of the 21st century is to defend our religion against fanatics — who kill themselves in the name of a great religion. Equally, through political and intellectual activism, our ideas of a moderate Islam should be heard in such newspapers as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
The US government, when it was still an ally of Saddam Hussein, never spoke of democratic values. It was not in its national interest — there were more important agendas to realize. Saddam, a dictator, did not understand his people, but as he was not elected by them, so he couldn’t care less. Saddam’s only aim was to prove to the world that he was needed by his people, and he used Islam for that purpose.
While both the US government and the Iraqi regime claim that they are “with the people,” Iraqis must be saying things like: “Where were you all these years?” or, “Who wants to be liberated by you?” or, “Thanks to the economic sanctions, we’re being starved while the dictator you are trying to get rid of is still powerful, alive and well.” Of course, that is not to say that Iraqis have not been brainwashed by Saddam’s propaganda about himself and his love for his people.
Our world order has changed since the war on Iraq.
The ordinary Arab civilian has been so misrepresented in the news, moderate Muslims are searching high and low for news items that reflect their point of view, and their aspirations. It is time world leaders heeded their call — otherwise the moderate Muslims will die out.
There are several lessons to be learned from the war in Iraq. One is, leave Islam alone. Dictators should not harness a great religion to their cause, nor should the US government use national interest to choose our leaders for us.
The assault on our thought, as Edward Said said in a lecture at the American University in Cairo — because of globalization, economic greed, and ready-packaged news — limits how we think.
Islamism is the world’s new threat.
The struggle of our time, as Edward Said explained, is to reinstate the past. The present requires a future, and the future is understood through looking at the past — what Said terms “de-intoxication.” Forgetting the past is what brought us to this crisis.
Whereas we are labeled liars, the American culture is living in denial because, as Said states in “Covering Islam,” they don’t know much about history or about the world. If the US government is so intent on fulfilling its national interest, Americans had better start educating themselves about the rest of the world.
The second struggle Said posits is to emphasize coexistence rather than the assertion of one history over the other — adding any number of countries to the Axis of Evil is one example.
Whatever America’s intentions in its attempt to “liberate Iraq,” and whichever means it uses to insult our intelligence by statements from the White House, Arab and Muslim civilians at the moment are just as distrustful of the US government as they are of Saddam’s regime. As Said puts it, we are not in a horse race. Resources should focus on dialogue, but dialogue with whom? Neither the US government nor our dictators want to admit that the Arab population are puppets in their hands.
Arab News Features 27 March 2003