Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2001, page 19

The Need for Re-examination

 

By Mohamed Hakki

The attacks on the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center and on the Pentagon outside Washington were shocking, repulsive, and abhorrent. They are frightening and saddening. All Arab Americans, almost to a man, condemned them. They share the same amount of anger and rage against the perpetrators. Almost everyone is worried, however, not only about his own and his family’s safety, and his job security, but about what may happen to his homeland, and what the future relations will be between the U.S. and the Arab and Muslim countries.

None of the accused, thank God, are Arab American, a fact not mentioned by the media so far. It should be emphasized that the retaliatory incidents against Arab- and Muslim-American individuals, groups and mosques were perpetrated by riffraff instilled with fear, prejudice and hatred against Arabs by an ignorant media, including Hollywood movies. The Sept. 11 attacks pushed them over the cliff and gave them an excuse to vent their anger. It should be noted, however, that every single U.S. official—from President George Bush and New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani on down—has warned against violence against Arab-Americans or Muslims.

Now let us examine the facts as they are available. This attack has been perpetrated not by suicide bombers as we have seen them in the West Bank and Gaza. The suicide bombers in Palestine are usually teenagers or young men under the age of 21. They are all desperate souls who have seen their homes, their unarmed and innocent mothers, sisters, and grandfathers blown out of existence by a superior military occupying power. Even their olive trees, the symbol of peace since the time of Noah, have been viciously and senselessly uprooted. Their only available answer to being bulldozed out of existence is to blow up themselves and as many of their enemies as they can.

The men who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were all men well into their 30s. All had good jobs. All had families. None of them presented themselves as “fanatic Muslims,” since some spent their time in bars and strip joints drinking vodka. Their rage is different. It was directed against the symbols of America’s wealth and power. They meant to humiliate America, and prove to Americans that they are not invincible, and maybe to humble America a little. The result of this foolish act was exactly the opposite.

Now, America is at war. The comparison most readily available in recent U.S. history is the attack against Pearl Harbor. But, at Pearl Harbor, the attacker was another empire, Japan. It had formidable military forces in the seas and in the air. This time, America lost more victims. Pearl Harbor was far away from the mainland, on the island of Hawaii. This time the target was the first city of the world and its most important capital. If America was described as a wounded tiger during the Vietnam War, it now is an awakening giant badly wounded. Nearly 99 percent of the population is ready to go to war. The whole country is solidly behind the president. Everyone now is saying that we must win that war. But against whom?

The only enemy identified so far is Osama bin Laden, a ragged fugitive living in caves in the poorest country in the world. Americans refer to him as “the Saudi billionaire,” and even sometimes as a trillionaire. At least when the British and European media mention him, they describe him either as the Saudi defector or fugitive.

No one asks, however, where he is keeping his billions. Under the rug? Or in the closet? Where? Bin Laden has no known teachings, no published books, no theories, no ideology to brainwash young minds. The CIA and the FBI, moreover, with intelligence surveillance that can listen in on every telephone conversation in the entire globe, were unable to pinpoint his exact location.

I do believe that Osama bin Laden has a network of followers. He may have been behind the attacks against the American military residence at Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. I still find it hard to believe, however, that he can “hire” 19 men to undertake such an horrendous attack and commit suicide in the process.

But the war is on. Again, against whom? It is said that the war is against “not only the terrorists, but the countries which harbor them.” This, clearly, means against Afghanistan’s Taliban government. It will be waged by “smoking them out,” using cruise missiles and other feel-good measures like carpet-bombing vast areas, sending Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. But this poor God-forsaken country is not too far from the Stone Age anyway.

Ground troops? Well, those poor devils defeated two former superpowers, the British in the 19th century, and the Soviets in the 20th. And what if these attacks disrupt life in Pakistan and beyond, in other Muslim countries, creating unbearable and counter-productive anti-American instabilities and terrorist attacks everywhere?

It is easy to say that we are going to rout their cells. How? Where is everywhere? These are highly motivated and highly organized underground groups with cells within cells within cells. Until the recent attacks against America, hundreds, even thousands of Arabs lost their lives in their own lands, more than any Western country has experienced.

One of the recently reiterated wise observations is that what happened should be considered a wake up call for America. It should also be a wake up call, however, for the entire Arab world. Here in the U.S., there are dozens of voices now saying that the attack was directly related not only to America’s blind support of Israel, but to its arming its ally with the most lethal weapons which are used to kill and maim Palestinians every day. They see America aiding and abetting the occupation, and Israeli annexation and ethnic cleansing, to limits unprecedented against any people.

Notwithstanding the fact that this wounded giant is in no mood to hear what can be interpreted as an apology for what happened, there is a call for what Hanan Ashrawi called “re-examination and soul searching” on all sides. It is true that some in the American media sound, as we say in Arabic, “like the mad woman carrying a drum, yelling: the Arabs are evil, the Arabs are evil. Tiki tum, tiki tum.”

We also hear from fellow travelers with pro-Israel policies, such as Dennis Ross, special envoy for the Middle East under former President Bill Clinton, who asserted that “even if we had reached peace at Camp David in July of last year, this still would have happened.” There are many others, however, like John McLaughlin, who devoted his whole TV hour on the Saturday night after the attacks to discuss with Dr. Henry Kissinger and a group of prominent European editors the direct effect of U.S. policies on the Middle East and its unquestioning support of Israel.

Kissinger haughtily adopted a contemptuous and condescending attitude toward recent U.S. policy, describing it as being subordinated to psychotherapy. Not surprisingly, he adopted Ross’s view that this tragedy has nothing to do with the Middle East and would have happened regardless. But then, Dr. Kissinger has always been part of the problem, not of the solution.

After all, he is the very man whom J.J. Goldberg, son of Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, said did more for Israel than all Israeli leaders put together. He is also the same man who, during the first intifada, advised the Israelis to continue to “shoot the kids, but hide the cameras.” This was at the time when television coverage of Israeli atrocities against stone-throwing children was turning the tide in America against the Israelis.

 

No Justification

Muslim- and Arab-Americans must go beyond expressing regret and sharing deep sorrow with the victims. We should be telling the U.S. that whatever the grievance, it does not justify this criminal act. This is the least decent thing dictated by our traditional Arab chivalry—even to an adversary.

A Libyan friend of mine told me six months ago that it may be with the grace of God that America is the sole superpower at this juncture of human history. After all, it is multi-ethnic, non-ideological, non-totalitarian, non-chauvinistic, and a God-fearing country. Americans have a deep sense of justice and fairness. We need to admit that and convey it to our fellow countrymen, even if we disagree vehemently with U.S. policy in the Middle East. Then we must embark together on the search for real solutions.

We must tell America that we have been victims of the same terrorists for at least 20 years. European countries have long refused to share intelligence on terrorism for fear that suspects may be subjected to torture and because of government practices against human rights. They were only half-right.

Some foolish voices now are saying that the terrorists hate America for what it is and what it stands for. Not true. These acts are not against the American way of life. As Marwan Bishara, the Israeli Palestinian, says, they were “against all of us, against humanity, and against civilization.” We all share the same values and the same principles. Islam is part of the same monotheistic faith as Judaism and Christianity. Allah is not a strange deity. Those who say this in the West are simply ignorant.

We yearn to have the same modern institutions, such as free elections, a vibrant and representative parliament, and a free press, that can produce civil societies which would render those terrorist groups purposeless and irrelevant. We yearn to modernize our religious institutions and confront and defeat ignorant extremist and distorted perceptions of Islam. There is a healthy ferment to do just that. Unfortunately, unless such goals are supported, if not adopted, by the government, people are hesitant to voice their opinions freely.

Governments in the Middle East are terrified of being identified as “secular” for fear of being labeled non-Muslim. The fact is, however, the Mideast had secular democratic governments for decades and remained solidly Muslim at the same time. Unfortunately, Egypt’s 1952 revolution (and other coups d’Žtat in Arab countries) destroyed the chances of developing an enlightened and progressive form of Islamic institutions when it nationalized not only the Awqaf (the religious and charitable private endowments), but Al Azhar itself.

Cairo discovered that the income from Al Awqaf exceeded that of the Suez Canal. By nationalizing Al Azhar, the Nasser government ended the longest period of religious learning, rebirth, and innovation in any faith. For 1,000 years Al Azhar was it. Nationalization rendered it part of the Egyptian government bureaucracy.

Then we must confront the Arab-Israeli problem. I listened to Arnaud de Borchgrave recounting an interview with Pakistani President Pervez Musharref, who told him that 1 percent of Pakistan’s population—meaning the extremists—is holding the other 99 percent hostage. I chuckled, because it is not much different from America.

Caryle Murphy, writing in The Washington Post Sept. 16, said that “whatever the U.S. does next to battle this brand of terrorism will require an expertise that has not been evident in the years since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.” What she did not say is that the U.S. has lacked the expertise to understand the true spirit of Islam for the last 50 years, not 8. When Edward Said tried to explain this in his book Covering Islam, he was attacked so viciously that even his origin was negated, and he was accused of not being a Palestinian.

Unlike in Europe, there are few institutions of Islamic learning in America. It is true as well that Arab-American organizations have achieved a degree of progress in this regard. But much more needs to be done.

A Sudanese friend of mine said, “It took us nearly 20 years to have the White House recognize and celebrate Ramadan, our month of fasting, our religious holidays, Al Adha and Al Fitr Eids. Now, those bastards [the terrorists] have threatened all we have achieved.”

It may be true that nothing will be the same again. My hope, however, is that this wake up call will end with a real re-assessment and re-examination of everything involving America and the Arab world, and what led those misguided souls to commit this utterly senseless crime.

Mohamed Hakki is an Egyptian-American journalist reporting from Washington for Middle East newspapers.

< Prev		Next >