BERN – The US administration has proved untrustworthy following the September 11 attacks and its response to the terror act has deepened a gap of mistrust between the Muslim world and the West, a prominent Swiss Muslim scholar said Tuesday, September 12.
« I think the great majority of Muslim people around the world expressed their condemnation of what happened. The feeling is that it was not Islamic and was against our values, » Tariq Ramadan told swissinfo in an interview.
« But there is a very deep lack of trust because of what happened afterwards at a global level, » said Ramadan, who is currently working as a senior research fellow at St Anthony’s College, Oxford University, and at the Lokahi Foundation in London.
Ramadan, who published more than 200 books on Islam, added that overall perception of the consequences of 9/11 is quite negative with Muslims in the United States and the West feeling under siege.
« Over the past five years there have been many people saying we need more mutual understanding, but since September 11 events around the world have conspired against this, » he said.
« There is still this perception in the West that Islam is a potential threat, not only the extremists and radicals but Muslims in general, » lamented Ramadan, who was appointed to a British government task force set up to combat radicalization and extremism in the wake of the London bombings.
He said anti-terror laws in the West and the US global war on terror with news about rendition flights and torture of terror suspects have added insult to injury.
The US Senate Office Of Research has said that the Arab Americans and the Muslim community have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Amnesty International also repeatedly said that racial profiling by US law enforcement agencies had grown dramatically in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
Ramadan himself experienced racial profiling when he was denied a US visa to teach Islamic philosophy and ethics at Indiana’s Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
The US State Department revoked his visa in July 2004 on the recommendation of officials in the Department of Homeland Security.
A US federal judge criticized last April the Bush administration for being inconsistent in its handling the visa application of Ramadan.
Untrustworthy
Ramadan said the US administration has proved untrustworthy.
« The current US administration under [George W. Bush] is perceived as untrustworthy and merely acting in favor of specific interests. »
He continued: « Muslims hear the West talking about democracy and human rights, yet they see that intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has not brought democracy and that people are not being treated in a dignified way. »
Ramadan said Muslims and Arabs pinned high hopes on a unified Europe to counterweight the US hegemony, but woke up to a European Union following in the footsteps of Washington.
« Europe is seen as having the potential to be different but instead follows the lead set by the US, » he said.
« After [their opposition to] the war in Iraq, there had been hope that European governments might show another face. But the war in Lebanon showed that little can be expected from Europe and that it is not courageous enough to take a stand on the Arab side. »
Europe’s heavyweights were reluctant to call for an immediate ceasefire in the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, echoing a US stance.
Thirty-three days of massive Israeli air strikes and bombardment killed up 1, 200 people, nearly all civilians, and left the country’s hard-won infrastructure in tatters.
« Muslim countries believe Israel was effectively given the green light to kill civilians in Lebanon for more than five weeks, » said Ramadan.
Ramadan, who was named by Time magazine as one of 100 innovators of the 21st Century for his work on creating an independent European Islam, said the West has to be « consistence » should it want to turn a new leaf with the Muslim world.
« You cannot say on the one hand that you are promoting democracy when on the other you are dealing with dictatorships, » in the Middle East, he said.
« Also this continuous discourse on the impossibility of integration is pushing Muslims to the margins of society. In Europe and the United States we still present Islam as something that is alien, as if we don’t have shared values and cannot live together, » he noted.
Source : IslamOnline
A Moslem Mea Culpa ( very rare)
We were brought up to hate – and we do
By Nonie Darwish
(Filed: 12/02/2006)
The Daily Telegraph
The controversy regarding the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed completely misses the point. Of course, the cartoons are offensive to Muslims, but newspaper cartoons do not warrant the burning of buildings and the killing of innocent people. The cartoons did not cause the disease of hate that we are seeing in the Muslim world on our television screens at night – they are only a symptom of a far greater disease.
I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt and in the Gaza Strip. In the 1950s, my father was sent by Egypt’s President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, to head the Egyptian military intelligence in Gaza and the Sinai where he founded the Palestinian Fedayeen, or « armed resistance ». They made cross-border attacks into Israel, killing 400 Israelis and wounding more than 900 others.
My father was killed as a result of the Fedayeen operations when I was eight years old. He was hailed by Nasser as a national hero and was considered a shaheed, or martyr. In his speech announcing the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, Nasser vowed that all of Egypt would take revenge for my father’s death. My siblings and I were asked by Nasser: « Which one of you will avenge your father’s death by killing Jews? » We looked at each other speechless, unable to answer.
In school in Gaza, I learned hate, vengeance and retaliation. Peace was never an option, as it was considered a sign of defeat and weakness. At school we sang songs with verses calling Jews « dogs » (in Arab culture, dogs are considered unclean).
Criticism and questioning were forbidden. When I did either of these, I was told: « Muslims cannot love the enemies of God, and those who do will get no mercy in hell. » As a young woman, I visited a Christian friend in Cairo during Friday prayers, and we both heard the verbal attacks on Christians and Jews from the loudspeakers outside the mosque. They said: « May God destroy the infidels and the Jews, the enemies of God. We are not to befriend them or make treaties with them. » We heard worshippers respond « Amen ».
My friend looked scared; I was ashamed. That was when I first realised that something was very wrong in the way my religion was taught and practised. Sadly, the way I was raised was not unique. Hundreds of millions of other Muslims also have been raised with the same hatred of the West and Israel as a way to distract from the failings of their leaders. Things have not changed since I was a little girl in the 1950s.
Palestinian television extols terrorists, and textbooks still deny the existence of Israel. More than 300 Palestinians schools are named after shaheeds, including my father. Roads in both Egypt and Gaza still bear his name – as they do of other « martyrs ». What sort of message does that send about the role of terrorists? That they are heroes. Leaders who signed peace treaties, such as President Anwar Sadat, have been assassinated. Today, the Islamo-fascist president of Iran uses nuclear dreams, Holocaust denials and threats to « wipe Israel off the map » as a way to maintain control of his divided country.
Indeed, with Denmark set to assume the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, the flames of the cartoon controversy have been fanned by Iran and Syria. This is critical since the International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to refer Iran to the Security Council and demand sanctions. At the same time, Syria is under scrutiny for its actions in Lebanon. Both Iran and Syria cynically want to embarrass the Danes to achieve their dangerous goals.
But the rallies and riots come from a public ripe with rage. From my childhood in Gaza until today, blaming Israel and the West has been an industry in the Muslim world. Whenever peace seemed attainable, Palestinian leaders found groups who would do everything to sabotage it. They allowed their people to be used as the front line of Arab jihad. Dictators in countries surrounding the Palestinians were only too happy to exploit the Palestinians as a diversion from problems in their own backyards. The only voice outside of government control in these areas has been the mosques, and these places of worship have been filled with talk of jihad.
Is it any surprise that after decades of indoctrination in a culture of hate, that people actually do hate? Arab society has created a system of relying on fear of a common enemy. It’s a system that has brought them much-needed unity, cohesion and compliance in a region ravaged by tribal feuds, instability, violence, and selfish corruption. So Arab leaders blame Jews and Christians rather than provide good schools, roads, hospitals, housing, jobs, or hope to their people.
For 30 years I lived inside this war zone of oppressive dictatorships and police states. Citizens competed to appease and glorify their dictators, but they looked the other way when Muslims tortured and terrorised other Muslims. I witnessed honour killings of girls, oppression of women, female genital mutilation, polygamy and its devastating effect on family relations. All of this is destroying the Muslim faith from within.
It’s time for Arabs and Muslims to stand up for their families. We must stop allowing our leaders to use the West and Israel as an excuse to distract from their own failed leadership and their citizens’ lack of freedoms. It’s time to stop allowing Arab leaders to complain about cartoons while turning a blind eye to people who defame Islam by holding Korans in one hand while murdering innocent people with the other.
Muslims need jobs – not jihad. Apologies about cartoons will not solve the problems. What is needed is hope and not hate. Unless we recognise that the culture of hate is the true root of the riots surrounding this cartoon controversy, this violent overreaction will only be the start of a clash of civilis-ations that the world cannot bear.
Nonie Darwish is a freelance writer and public speaker.
Reply to Nonie Darwish: In your very eloquently written article you have shown a good bit of factual imbalance. Though rightly you lay a good deal of the balme on our rulers for the day to day problems we live, you are very harsh on the lay person.
Some people’s religion was the semi-socialist Nasserist agenda, but you know as much as I do that it is our parents, families and friends who affect us and our feelings and principles. You ignore the fact that the West decided with selective amnesia to penalise us for what it had done for centuries to the jewish people. Is there any doubt that Western Europeans massacred the Jews more than anybody else? Is there any doubt that Western Europeans and US administration are the main proponents for our beloved presidents and kings? What has the oppressed beneath hating the oppressor.
And may I ask you, about the justice, the fraternity and the equality, under which non-white anglo-saxons, however excelling they are see the glass ceiling reigning above them.
Though I agree with you on needing the reformation for our nations, I see that you feel apologetic about your origin, and i do not share that with you.
When will you see your own faults?
As a Christian I am routinely offended by Muslims and their actions in the name of their religion; the hate, the murder, the spreading of terror, the ignorance of their ideologies. Who, from the Islamic world, is apologising for those words and actions which offend me and my beliefs? The Pope should not have apologised, he had nothing to apologise for. I completely agree with this article. There will be no progress until the Islamic world, in its entirety, accepts the right of the individual to participate in whichever religion he or she chooses.