BEIRUT, 18 October 2004 — Today’s day-to-day news reports suggest that the overall relationship between Arab and Muslim societies and the West, especially the United States, is a worsening cycle of war, threats, fears, and savage killings. The reality is more complex, with confrontations at several levels counterbalanced by underlying compatibilities that provide potential common ground for a healthier relationship in the future.
If we take American-Arab or American-Middle Eastern relations as the core of the wider Islamic-Western relationship, we can identify several significant reasons why so many parties on both sides have clashed in recent years. Modern history is probably the single most important backdrop to the tensions, represented by the prevalent Middle Eastern suspicion of Western armies coming into the region to occupy, exploit, or redefine its people and countries.
Arab memories even of the Crusades, more than eight centuries earlier, remain real and politically relevant. In the past two centuries since Napoleon’s armies invaded Egypt and launched the modern European colonial era in the Middle East, local public opinion remains deeply resentful of Western political and military intervention. This has been manifested again in widespread Middle Eastern opposition to the American-led war to change the Iraqi regime and redraw the political map of the region.
Four powerful associated contemporary issues compound the bitter historical legacy of the region: Economic distress, brisk social change, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the sustained tradition of Arab autocracy and dictatorship.
The combination of these factors has created an Arab and Islamic landscape that is generally suspicious of Western motives, and often critical of existing indigenous regimes and elites that are seen to be created and supported by the West. In recent years, this restive, indignant, often humiliated public mood has also spawned small bands of militants who have used terror against their own regimes and the West.
The common perception across the Middle East is that Western powers for two centuries have routinely used their diplomatic power and sent their armies to occupy our lands, remove nationalist or anti-Western regimes they dislike, preserve conservative regimes and dictators they are comfortable with, maintain access to oil, or ensure Israel’s superiority over all neighboring countries.
For half a century during the Cold War and the height of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the West broadly promoted autocratic and authoritarian Arab, Turkish, and Iranian regimes because this served the West’s and Israel’s purposes — without any concern for the sentiments, rights, or aspirations of ordinary citizens in this region. Added to this is the economic stagnation, even regression in some countries, fuelling calls to deal with the indignities of corruption, abuse of power, and widening disparities. At the same time, many in the Middle East feel that their basic cultural and religious values — let alone their national and political rights — are vulnerable to a Western-led onslaught couched in the dynamics of globalization, the communications revolution, and free trade.
So as indigenous Islamist, nationalist, or leftist movements emerged in recent decades, and challenged local regimes, Israel, and the US, they usually found a deep groundswell of public acclaim. Support for Nasser, Khomeini, the Palestinian resistance, Hezbollah, Mossadegh, Saddam Hussein, or even Osama Bin Laden today reflects this deep legacy of anti-Western and anti-Israeli bitterness, resentment, and indignity in Middle Eastern public opinion. Not only do many Westerners and Middle Easterners now clash militarily, but those who seek to work together for democracy, justice and reform are often hindered by the debilitating legacy of fear, suspicion, and anger.
The only good news in this otherwise gloomy picture is that global and regional public opinion surveys (especially the Global Values Survey) routinely confirm that Arabs and Muslims and Americans and Westerners share most of the basic values related to good governance, such as participation, accountability, justice, and equality. There is a fertile, enduring foundation of positive personal and public values that can be exploited to bring Arabs and Muslims and the West into a more constructive new relationship. But these values remain crushed under the weight of confrontation, war, and terrorism. Until the constraints of modern history are addressed and redressed, the potential for a mutually more beneficial Arab and Islamic-Western relationship will remain dormant in most spheres of life.
— Rami G. Khouri is executive editor of the Daily Star newspaper (Beirut, Lebanon). This article is part of a series of views on the relationship between the Islamic and Arab world and the West, published in partnership with the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).