Yesterday, in an editorial titled “Regretfully, terrorists are Muslims” Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Gulf News editor in chief, took his Arab News counterpart Khaled Almaeena to task over the latter’s recent op-ed headed “I Am Not Going to Apologize”.
Khaled contends, “Individual acts should not be blamed on our Ummah” and urges Muslims to be “brave and stand tall”, while pointing out that “it is we Muslims who have been both slain and slandered in the past few decades.
On the other hand, Abdul Hamid says: “No, Almaeena! Apologizing for the acts of these fools makes us truly faithful to our beliefs and identity as Muslims”.
Here I will leave the debate to the verbal protagonists themselves for I do not believe that Islam should be inserted into the equation. In my opinion, terrorism has a lot more to do with politics than religion. Indeed, the London would-be bomber, caught in Rome, has told an Italian judge that his crime was motivated by Iraq and not religious ideology.
This isn’t to say that individuals and groups with political gripes aren’t mercilessly using religion as a rallying tool. But in reality, religion in this militant context is little more than a sidebar.
In answer to a recent e-mail from a reader called Robert, who wrote, “It is time for Muslims to stand up and condemn these acts of terrorism against innocent people — Muslim and non-Muslim...” I put forward my thesis that this region’s anger against the West has its roots in policies, which resulted in the carving up of the Middle East.
“From then on, it has gone severely downhill with successive US governments lending unconditional support to an ever-strengthening Israel and displaying gross pro-Israel bias,” I wrote. “So far as this region was concerned the anger was already simmering long before 9-11.” The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have merely heaped fuel onto the embers. In the same missive, I contended that anger against the West is far from being a Muslim phenomenon.
In Africa, there is resentment toward Western powers due to the brutal treatment of African slaves, the pillaging of the continent’s natural resources and the occupation of vast tracts of its land by Britain, France, Spain, Holland and Portugal, not to mention the inhuman apartheid system only recently eradicated in South Africa.
All over the subcontinent, Indians and Pakistanis rightly still bristle at memories of the Raj when corpulent British memsahibs in lacey hats were carried around by bearers en route to a garden party or a partridge shoot while their own starved.
If Abdul Hamid Ahmad is right and we are all culpable for the crimes of others, then as a Briton I must personally apologize for the betrayal of Arabs by one Sir Mark Sykes, who along with a French colleague carved up the dismembered Ottoman Empire into British and French protectorates instead of handing those lands over to their rightful owners, as promised.
Further, I must say mea culpa to the peoples of the subcontinent for the humiliations heaped upon them by my forefathers and for the theft of their riches symbolized by the Kohinoor diamond that today can be seen as a jewel in the crown, housed in the Tower of London. And I must say sorry for the partition of India and the hatreds directly provoked by Britain’s “divide and rule” policies.
Before Africans, I must surely prostrate myself and ask forgiveness for the British occupation of Kenya during which more than 10,000 were killed and when according to Mark Curtis, author of “Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World”, insurgents’ hands were chopped off to make fingerprinting easier while entire villages were burned to the ground.
And to the former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, forced out by Britain so that Diego Garcia could be handed over to the Americans for use as a base, I must forward my abject and sincere apologies for their ongoing refugee status to make way for warplanes and “ghost prisoners”.
Moreover, if we are to be responsible for the sins of our fathers, then as a child of Christians I must surely be berated for the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials.
As a European, I must condemn the Napoleonic wars, Hitler and his death camps and the vile annexation of Algeria.
Finally, as a Westerner, I can surely not escape the burden of genocide committed against indigenous Americans, Australians and New Zealanders.
Nor can I hide from the ghosts of more than one million Vietnamese caught up in America’s zeal to eradicate Communism or the earlier specters of those who suffered horrendous, often slow, deaths as a result of the world’s first atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
There is so much for which to apologize and not enough space, so anyone inadvertently forgotten will please accept my condolences and regrets.
But, sadly, what use are apologies when we have learned so little from the past? Shouldn’t we, instead, be concentrating on righting wrongs and changing greedy “will to power” mindsets? As I write, there are literally millions of people in Niger facing hunger and starvation, many forced to eat leaves. Does anyone care? Or are we all too busy pointing fingers?
Shouldn’t we look upon each other as brothers and sisters who share this one beautiful world and have a duty, not only to one another, but also to protect it?
Until that day, if it ever comes, we will go on terrorizing one another in the name of this or that with human bombs, missiles, tanks and guns, always proclaiming our righteousness and superiority while holding up faux banners of religion.
In a world where people truly observed their religious obligations there would be no hatred, no terrorism and no wars. And that, my friends, is the bottom line, unpalatable as that may be for some.
