Islam and the west

Mir Adnan Aziz

Two profound historical forces continue to inform contemporary anti-Western discourse: colonialism and globalization. In the past, Muslim discourse worked from a secure civilization hub that dominated the Middle East and its surrounding regions. Today, what was once the heart of the Muslim world is not only rive with political ills -- but for all sorts of reasons in the post colonial era, Muslims have lost confidence as a cultural and civilization force.

Today, the world over, Muslims see themselves as being perpetually wronged. This notion is precipitated by the fact that there is a tremendous amount of injustice in majority of the Muslim world. It is rank with political corruption, economic stagnation, tyrannical oppression, abject poverty, and lack of education. Muslims have been the victims of colonization, military occupation, genocide, hunger, pestilence and war. Most of the world's refugees are Muslims.

The West, however, despite all its 'wisdom', aggravates this feeling by totally failing to gauge the sensitivities of the Muslim world. Our beliefs, the underlying assumptions about the world that govern our lives, limit how we react to it. From our earliest experiences and the culture around us, we form often unspoken ideas about what is desirable or abhorrent, holy or impure, possible or impossible. These ideas form the boundaries into which later concepts must fit so as to make us feel that the world makes sense. Such beliefs are extremely hard to shift, as they tend to become instincts. Our belief structures drive us because they give us rules to live by, and a sense that there is order, purpose and personal significance in what is otherwise an alarmingly chaotic world.

In the world of today we have a minority so angered by the West, its forced norms and values that they take it as a right to react violently. Fissures, which impulsively or compulsively, have become ever-deepening voids of difference. The East, in the world of today, is seen as a negative mirror image of the West -- an imaginary representation of Western desires and fears projected onto others. A majority in the Muslim world views the West as biased to the blind faith in its obvious moral superiority, its way of life, and a refusal to recognize a search for meaning in the lives of others. Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem 'The White Man's Burden' describes the colonized as 'your new-caught, sullen people, half-devil and half-child'. Today the 'colonized' are nothing but ideologically crazed, high-tech tooled-up 'terrorists'.

Like it or not, it is imperative that we understand that all religions with their value systems, have their own deep appeal for the followers. It cannot be said that violence is an Islamic phenomenon. Violence has no religion or nationality. If some Islamic groups/Muslims are involved in violence and are considered extremist, there are also non- Islamic groups, even nations that are known for committing acts of violence, horrendous genocide.

Islam today has taken over the mantle of extremism and terrorism as viewed by the West. In the world of today, views that would be widely regarded as prejudiced and deeply offensive if directed towards other religions, are unfortunately seen as acceptable when expressed about Islam. Imagine the furor if one of our political bigwigs threatened to obliterate the Vatican, reciprocating the despicably audacious suggestion of bombing Makkah and Medina. These opinions and sentiments slip beneath the West's politically correct censorship monitor in the guise of defending the very liberal values that dictate political correctness and tolerance of the 'free world'.

Islamophobia covers a whole gamut of negative beliefs and attitudes based on prejudice, misconception, blame, resentment and fear. Particularly insidious is the ease and its frequent articulation in the West of today. What unites the critics of Islam and those who express their Islam phobia in cruder ways, is seen and deemed by many in the Muslim world, as ultimately a wish to displace religion as their core value system. Many Muslims globally believe what is wanted, or rather demanded, of the Islamic societies is that they exhibit the same sort of tolerance, diversity of opinion and belief as Western societies. Muslim societies should move to the more 'advanced' situation of modern Western culture: advocating 'freedom of expression', embracing a plurality of truths, rather than the singularity of revelation and leaving it to the liberal, economic and cultural market place to sort out which version of reality/expression is more widely accepted and normatively convincing. Putting it another way, the Islamic world should cease to be different to other value systems; it should become totally Westernized and 'liberal'. This is how fundamental aggressive hostility towards Islam and 'reasonable' liberal critique of its belief and society become inseparable bedfellows. As one intensifies, so does the other.

September 11 sparked off a wave of blame and vengeful feelings towards Muslims. Six years down the line, thousands of innocent deaths dismissed as collateral damage, Afghanistan and Iraq a quagmire, our lives are as insecure as never before. The yawning chasm between faiths seems unbridgeable. Why don't the 'ruthlessly subjugated' now 'liberated' Afghans and Iraqis view the West as their savior? Is something wrong with the conceptual model of 'the war on terror'? The truth is somewhere in between: common ground to be discovered yet.

The merciless portrayal of us and them; good versus evil, creating an all enveloping aura of fear; has transformed the war on terror from being a grotesque foreign policy misadventure to a necessary cause worth fighting for. Islamophobia enables the creation of a convenient, ever lurking enemy for the war on terror. This whipping up of negative sentiments is an attempt to find a scapegoat to the problems faced in Iraq, Afghanistan and the West's own backyard, by the ever-dwindling 'coalition of the willing'.

What we see is an absolute failure to find a real enemy, a real threat to correspond to the 'terror' that the war was supposed to be directed against. If you do not know who your enemy is but think he is out there somewhere, perpetually plotting against you, this indeed accentuates the power of the terror like an ever hanging sword of Damocles: worse the enemy you do not know than the enemy you do. Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Taliban, to name a few, remain surreal and incomplete symbols for the real enemy in the WoT-- the one that is seen as a 'gladiator' -- is Islam itself.

This fear has taken a stranglehold because of viewing Islam not as originally bequeathed on us, but by viewing it as a totally intolerant, brutal and expansionist religion. It is time the West gave up its fight with shadows and engage with reality. This can only be possible by understanding the essence of Islam and how a vast majority of Muslims the world over see it, believe in it. Islam and the West do not have to be enemies; they can live together and equitably share the threatened 'resources' of the earth to live in peace and harmony.

History, if only we could learn from it, teaches us that you do not defeat 'terrorism' by continuing to deny the dignity and the rights of those whose cause is championed in extremes by the men of violence, and by trying to secure a military victory over them. The war on terror embraces unrealistic objectives, lacks strategic clarity and as is glaringly evident, not sustainable over the long haul. A resolution can evolve only through reconciliation, dialogue and recovery of mutual respect.

miradnanaziz@gmail.com