US Spin Won’t Work, Says Rania
Lulwa Shalhoub, Arab News
JEDDAH, 26 February 2007 — Building a developed future for Muslims and Middle Eastern generations and correcting the false images of them in the West through reforms in the region was the thrust of Jordanian Queen Rania’s speech during the first session of the eighth Jeddah Economic Forum yesterday.
She concentrated on the idea that the older generation in all cultures works for the best of their younger generations and for building a better world. “We are now planting seeds for future technological development,” said the queen.
The Middle East is developing nowadays, having more elections and educational reforms. “Here in Jeddah, you had the distinction of electing women as Jeddah Chamber of Commerce & Industry (JCCI) board members two years ago,” she said.
Saudi women are increasingly becoming professional, be they teachers, doctors, engineers or journalists, said the queen. “This is the Arabian woman that we are proud of and with whom the West is not yet familiar,” she added.
The queen said that despite the advantages and disadvantages of the modern world, there are certain core values that should not be written off as anachronistic.
“What about the language of the conscience and the heart?” she asked the audience.
She said that there is an urgent need to heal the world. “Tomorrow’s landscape may not flourish as it should because today the soil is being polluted by violence, mistreatment and fear,” she said.
Rania said that the misunderstandings between the West and the Muslim world run in both directions, with the Western image of a Muslim as a violent extremist, a conduit for fear. On the other hand, the image of the West in the Middle East is of a culture founded in violence and arrogance, a conduit for suspicion.
“We still prejudge others through labels and not through personal experience and direct contact with them,” said the queen, pointing out that cultural exchange helps eliminate these misunderstandings.
However, a successful rectification of these misunderstandings is impossible unless both sides actively participate, she said, adding that Easterners and Westerners must open up and use the culture of dialogue and respect.
“Americans, for example, must face up to the fact that the negative sentiments among many Arabs stem not from the lack of understanding of US policy in our region, but because many Arabs and Muslims think many of these policies are wrong and unsound,” she said. “No amount of spin can make this problem go away. If they want to win regional ‘hearts and minds’, US foreign policy must be balanced, just, and deliver peace, not war.”
The queen also called on the Muslim Ummah to address some of the factors that contribute to the misunderstandings in the West about Islam. While condemning “Islamophobia” in the West, Queen Rania also said Muslims must recognize that there are people in the world who have hijacked Islam and have used it to commit atrocities that subsequently feed anti-Islamic prejudices among non-Muslims in the West.
Muslims have a right to denounce Israeli policies that are hostile to Palestinian and Lebanese autonomy, and to oppose human rights abuses in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. “But we also have to stand in the face of the sectarian violence that is escalating in some of our countries,” she said, adding that the moral high ground is taken when Muslims “reject the voices of extremism in our midst.”
The queen focused much of her speech to Muslim-on-Muslim violence, saying that it is difficult to ask the West to accommodate Muslims and Arabs as neighbors when Muslims and Arabs are engaged in sectarian violence in places such as Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Afghanistan. As a mother, she asked the audience to consider the future in light of what is happening in the present.
“I’m a mother of four — Hussain, Iman, Salma and Hashim. Think of your children while you are listening to my words now,” she said. “We are mothers and fathers of thousands of children. What kind of future are we preparing them for? Can we say that we are planting seeds of hope for their futures? Are we really taking part in technological developing and peace?” The queen praised Jeddah for its unique standing as a gateway to the holy cities that has become a Muslim melting pot.
“The reins of our destiny are in our own hands,” she said. “We must summon the courage to steer this destiny. There is no place more inspiring for that than Jeddah, a place that has gathered pilgrims of all races, colors and nationalities, as well as the Islamic qualities of mercy, compassion, humility, charity, tolerance and peace.”
She invoked the golden age of Islam when Arab civilization was more open to the wisdom of others. “The Arab ancestors welcomed new ideas from foreign lands and combined them with their own experiences to push boundaries of knowledge farther,” she said.
The queen referred to two important non-Muslim moral leaders of the 20th Century — Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., who revolutionized methods of nonviolent protest and boycotts through mass participation and personal sacrifice.
These “leaders of humanity”, as she called them, managed to create profound change in their societies by meeting the violence of the state with nonviolent popular uprising. She quoted King’s famous line: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor popular, but because conscience tells him it is right.”
“And let us not forget the great words of our own religion,” she added. “God said in the Holy Qur’an ‘God will not change a nation until they change themselves,’” the queen said. “Today we must ask ourselves, where is that spirit?”
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