PARIS, 14 June 2004 — This year the world celebrates the 60th anniversary of the defeat of the Nazis and the death of fascism. Last week Twenty-two heads of state and government met in Normandy, France to commemorate D-Day.
The older generation remembers the horrors of World War II. Most of us were born after the war, or were too young to remember the grief, the hardship, the ferocious battles and the events that preceded and succeeded the war. But history is a superb teacher. It taught us to hate and condemn those who inflicted death, pain and misery on millions of innocent people.
The 60th anniversary of the restoration of peace and sanity to the world is an opportunity for our generation to do some soul-searching exercise and to examine and assess the state of affairs in our so-called global village.
Alas! The process will provide us with firm evidence that we are in deep trouble and that our global village is in total disorder.
The attacks on New York and Washington killed almost 3,000 innocent souls. It triggered a political earthquake that threatened long-established friendships between the Muslim world and the West. It led to costly wars, which scratched the foundation of the UN system, broke the unity of the international community, caused death and injury and left many handicapped, bereaved, orphaned and widowed.
Formerly unknown anti-American sentiments are visible in many countries and resentment to American policy is widespread. The warm friendship between Arabs and Americans has cooled down. A hostile media is fanning anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Saudi sentiments in the West in general, and in America in particular.
The violence and the chaos in Gaza, the West Bank and Iraq claim innocent lives and break many hearts every day. The systematic arrest and the targeted assassination of Palestinian leaders, the rising death toll among civilians, the demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes and livelihoods, the use of heavy machinery in densely populated areas have dealt human rights a severe blow
Injustice, suicide bombs and a stalemate in negotiations have robbed Palestinians and Israeli people of a chance to live in two separate states with secure borders. A just and fair solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem remains a distant dream. The optimism, which for many years fueled international endeavors to promote peace between Palestinians and Israelis, seem to have ebbed.
The photographs of Iraqis, tortured, stripped naked, morally and sexually abused at the hands of smiling US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison sent waves of shock and anger around the world.
Grim stories of dead bodies devoured by stray dogs, and others preserved for days in vegetable refrigerators, awaiting burials, enraged the whole world and shattered faith in the rule of law and justice.
The massacre of wedding guests and singers in Iraq and the fatal shooting of unarmed young and old demonstrators in the West Bank poured oil on a burning fire.
The instability and insecurity in Iraq have diminished the appetite of Arabs for imported democracy and strengthened their resistance to political, educational, social and economic reform dictated by outsiders.
The relentless attack on Islam, the vicious attempts to portray Muslim women wearing scarves and Muslim men wearing beards as potential terrorists and threats to national security, the harsh criticism directed at Muslim culture, the arrest and imprisonment of innocent Muslims, who were later acquitted and released, the coinage and frequent use of words with religious connotation, such as “Islamist’, “Islamism” and “jihadists” to refer to terrorist groups have strengthened suspicion that the war on terror is no more and no less than a war on Islam and its followers. Revenge, cruelty, and discrimination pollute our global village. Pessimism, frustration and despair prevail on a wide scale. The seeds of hatred, suspicion and mistrust are fast bearing fruits.
Covert and overt harassment and discriminations against moderate “scarved” and “unscarved” Arab and Muslim women working in few offices and organizations in the West, have cast doubts on calls in the West for the empowerment and the improvement of the status of Arab and Muslim women.
Terrorists are striking indiscriminately everywhere in an attempt to destabilize countries and to draw a wedge between Muslim and non-Muslim societies. Their aim is to pave the way for a clash of civilizations, which most of us do not want and would spare no effort to avert.
No place is sacred and no life safe. Is there a way out of the dark tunnel we entered on Sept. 11, 2001? Are peace and security within our reach?
Where there is a will there is a way.
The 60th anniversary of the triumph of peace, liberation and justice should be celebrated by serious attempts to put the world in order and a genuine determination to bring back normalcy to our lives.
We will never forget the loved ones we lost in the terrorist attacks in America, Morocco, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Spain and elsewhere. We cannot forget the victims of the raging violence in Gaza, the West bank, Afghanistan or Iraq. We cannot erase from our memory images of airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers, scattered dead bodies, demolished homes, homeless Palestinians and hooded, tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners. Yet we can find room for forgiveness in our aching hearts.
Leveling blame at each other, attacking each other’s cultures and abusing each other’s religion will breed hostility and hatred. Interfering in each other’s internal affairs and imposing our beliefs, views and social, educational, political and economic systems on others will create divisions, trigger conflicts and promote resentment, hatred and hostility.
We have leaned many useful lessons from the sad events of the last three years. It will guide our search for lasting peace, sustainable development and international unity.
We have learned that violence breeds violence, that terrorism cannot be defeated with war machinery alone, that extremism is the offspring of injustice and deadly conflicts, that fanaticism is a disease, which should be fought and conquered, that Western-style democracy cannot flourish on every soil and that home-grown and home-driven reform alone can succeed.
We have also learned that dissidents, who live years outside their countries, rarely possess reliable information and that the loud voice of a handful of “Westernized” Arab and Muslim women is not the voice of the silent majority of Arab and Muslim women who live in or outside the Arab and the Muslim world.
Peace and security can only be achieved if we learn to love humanity, respect each other’s way of life, mobilize all human resources to actively participate in a war on terror that does not lose its track or deviate from its declared purposes.
We need international lawyers who can show us the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters. We need honest, unbiased mediators who can bring the fighting groups to the negotiation table and bring to an end the conflicts and carnages in Africa and the Middle East.
We need fair judges who will defend the innocent and punish the criminals. We need unbiased journalists and credible radio and TV channels that can give us an honest account and a true picture of events taking place in our world.
We need schools and teachers who can teach our children love, compassion and respect for world cultures and world faiths. We need physicians (not spin doctors) who can treat thousands of victims of our folly and efficient psychiatrists who can comfort the abused, the tortured, the bereaved and the traumatized. We need intellectuals who can mend fences and build bridge of understanding among the different nations.
We need sociologists who can remind us that we live in a global village and share a common destiny. We need historian who can remind us that the victims of Sept. 11 attacks belonged to different faiths, different races and different nationalities.
We need theologians who can teach us respect for all world religions and anthropologists who can increase our knowledge and appreciation of world cultures.
We need efficient researchers who can identify the causes of terrorism. Blaming all acts of terror on the religions we embrace and the cultures to which we belong will produce more conflicts. No religion promotes violence and no culture condones cruelty. Killing in the name of God is blasphemy, abusing and torturing the weak and the helpless is sadism and sheer barbarism.
We need to support the work of the relief organizations, which operate in conflict zones and disaster areas, so they may continue to provide care for the orphans, food for the hungry and shelter for the homeless.
We need to turn off the spinning machine, forget about upcoming elections, and stop pushing major problems under the carpet.
The task is difficult, but not impossible.
— Ibtissam Al-Bassam is a former dean of King Fahd Academy in London and a staff member of UNESCO. The views expressed are hers alone, and not that of the organization she works for.
