Single-minded simple-mindedness
By Ehsan Ahrari
COMMENTARY
Asia Times Online
Feb 12, 2003
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, many journalists and commentators have made a career out of attempting to find the answer to the burning question of the era: "Why do they hate us?" But as much as I have tried to understand growing anti-Americanism worldwide, I must admit that I am troubled by the attempts of some to locate the center of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world. I believe the attempt to be condescending - unwittingly, perhaps, but condescending nevertheless - and often permeated by simplistic extrapolations.
At the outset, let me establish a number of premises underlying my arguments. I love the United States. This is my chosen home. The world of Islam is a part of me, since I am a product of it. So, I know something about both worlds. I believe that the American promise of democracy, equality, and technological achievement is an alternative that Muslim masses must consider emulating, while they are struggling in their own idiosyncratic ways to overthrow the unjust, anachronistic and despotic rulers in their respective countries. In this sense, I share and endorse wholeheartedly the common criticisms of the Islamic societies. I also share Americans' enthusiasm for democracy for the world of Islam, even though I envision a type of democracy that is more reflective and representative of the socio-political realities of those regions.
At the same time, however, I do not believe that Osama bin Ladin represents anything about the world of Islam, except that he claims to be a representative of the Wahhabi puritanical creed. I believe that the Wahhabi creed is in dire need of revisiting and debate by a whole slew of Muslim scholars who also know something about, and wholeheartedly believe in, the principle of tajdeed (reinterpretation or reform).
There is little doubt that Wahhabi Saudi schools and their counterparts in Pakistan have been perpetuating the militant notion of jihad. Since the implosion of the "godless" Soviet Union, the United States has become a focus of their criticism and activities. Undoubtedly, the autocratic Muslim regimes have turned a blind eye to the anti-Western teachings of these schools. But the fact is that anti-Westernism is not a recent phenomenon of the Islamic (indeed, Third World) countries. The end of the Cold War produced two highly contentious theses in the West - "the end of ideology" authored by Francis Fukuyama and "the clash of civilizations" thesis of Samuel Huntington. Put simply, Fukuyama's argument was that, with the implosion of the Soviet Union and the defeat of communism, there were no more battles left or victories to win by Western liberal secular democracy. By implication, all the remaining ideologies had the choice of either being radically altered in order to accommodate the Western liberal democratic tradition, or be subsumed under its rising tide.
For Islamists, this was an offensive proposition, for they also were convinced about the ultimate truth and eternal correctness of their religion.
For Huntington, the post-Cold War struggle may best be described as a clash between Islam, which he described as "militant" and "aggressive", and the West. This reductionistic point of view was just that: a point of view of a social scientist who never studied Islam as a theology, but was too eager to draw wrong conclusions after selectively looking at a few politico-social patterns. He never drew such a wrong-headed conclusion about Christianity, even though it can be argued that its followers were responsible, most recently, for two world wars, resulting in millions of deaths. It is true that a lot of violence has been perpetrated in the name of Islam, but quite a bit of such "evidence" can also be used to similarly malign Christianity. However, in the West, all those who had similar intellectual leanings, to start with, accepted the Huntingtonian argument as "fact".
Combine Fukuyama's thesis with Huntington's clash of civilization thesis, which was seen all over the Islamic world as grotesquely anti-Islamic, and you will begin to realize how the world looked from the other side. Islamist groups became focused most intently on Huntington's highly publicized thesis, in order to make their own point about the "anti-Islamic" and "Islamophobic" character of the West in general, and especially that of the United States. So, reasons for anti-Westernism or anti-Americanism in the world are more diverse and complex, and are not limited to the role of Wahhabi schools, the Saudi- funded charities, or the presence of authoritarian rule in almost all Muslim countries, even though those variables definitely made their contributions to it.
Unlike commentators who persistently claim that Muslims formulate the predominant group that is swept by anti-Americanism, I believe that anti-Americanism is an across-the-board phenomenon of contemporary world affairs. As regrettable as it has been, it reflects a number of realities involving the United States.
First and foremost, as the most powerful military nation in the world, one that often uses morality as one of the primary driving forces for its foreign and defense policy, the US has become the focal point of attention, scrutiny and criticism worldwide by those who seem to think that the practice of double standards is okay by the rest of the world, but not by the US.
Second, the Bush administration's unflinching practice of unilateralism has created an ample pool of resentment toward it, especially in Europe, where the chief driving forces behind the emerging new superstate - ie, the European Union - are heavy reliance on international law, cooperative diplomacy and multilateralism. It has been argued by some (Robert Kagan, among others) that powerful nations frequently behave as if they are living in Mr Hobbes' neighborhood rather than in Mr Rogers' (a popular children's educational TV series in the United States).
Third, the September 11 attacks, and the United States' preference for militaristic solutions to the scourge of global terrorism, has become one more reason why that approach is regarded in many corners of the world as overly uni-dimensional and simplistic.
Fourth, while post-Taliban Afghanistan lingers on as a basket case, the US, instead of rebuilding it as a peaceful and economically prosperous place, has become focused on similarly dismantling the current regime in Iraq, and then moving on to other more pressing strategic priorities that would then emerge. There is fear in the areas contiguous to Iraq that, like the post-Taliban Afghanistan, the post-Saddam Iraq would continue to be a place of enormous human suffering, thereby giving birth to even worse tyrants and terrorists than Saddam and bin Ladin.
More to the point, anti-Americanism is not limited to the world of Islam. Why, for example, were so many protestors demonstrating against the US in Davos, Switzerland, during the meeting of the World Economic Forum this past January? I am sure most of those protestors were not Muslims.
My advice, then, to those who would pronounce simple verdicts on the "Islamic world" is the same that I would give myself regarding complex topics: do your research, visit the area, talk to people, and when you write, remember that the Middle East is a land familiar with the terrible consequences that come from making simple miscalculations about others' feelings and intentions. For a shining example of this phenomenon, one need look no further than Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein just before the initiation of the Iran-Iraq war of 1981. Or the United States just before the first Gulf War in 1991. In the final analysis, the Middle East has a special way of making all of us eat humble pie.
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Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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