. . . . . . . . . .

"WW III? No thanks...!" On-Line Library

What is an appropropriate response?
Political and philosophical considerations after the attack on the Word Trade Center

(... continued)

"There is a feeling of being betrayed, it's a feeling of being let down, 
and you can only be let down by somebody you care for," says Haider, out 
for an evening stroll in a tony Islamabad neighborhood.

"They said you will be the bulwark of America and of the free world 
against Communism. But then they dropped a friend for no good reason."

Today, Haider sees a "convergence of interests" between the United States 
and Pakistan in the fight against terrorism. But he says that President 
Bush will need to watch his language when he talks about the Muslim world.
"When Bush talked of a Crusade ... it was not a slip of the tongue. It was 
a mindset. When they talk of terrorism, the only thing they have in mind 
is Islam."

Ultimately, Haider does see a way for America and Muslim nations to become
lasting friends, but only if the US begins to give as much weight to the 
interests of Muslim nations as it does to Israel.

"When you deny justice to people, which you have been doing for several 
decades in Palestine, and they are intelligent, sensitive people, they are
going to find something to do," warns Haider. "They might take shelter in 
Islam, in fatalism, and some will come to despise you."


An Egyptian 'inspired' to join Afghan fighters

Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical Muslim cleric who runs a mosque in 
a shabby district of north London, has certainly come to despise America.

Abu Hamza says he used to admire the West when he was a young man - so 
much so that he dropped out of university in his native Alexandria, Egypt,
to study in Britain. And he clearly had nothing against the British 
government when he took a job as a civil engineer at Sandhurst, the 
British equivalent of West Point, after he graduated.

But as he immersed himself more and more in religious studies, and came 
into contact with more and more Arab mujahideen, who had travelled from 
the mountains of Afghanistan to England for medical treatment, he began to
change his outlook.

"When you see how happy they are, how anxious to just have a new limb so 
they can run again and fight again, not thinking of retiring, their main 
ambition is to get killed in the cause of God ... you see another 
dimension in the verses of the Koran," says Abu Hamza.

Inspired by their example, he took his family to Afghanistan in 1990, to 
work there as a civil engineer, building roads, tunnels, and "anything I 
could do." And he also fought with the mujahideen against Afghan President
Mohammad Najibullah (seen as a Russian stand-in supported by the Soviets), 
until he blew both his hands off and lost the sight in his left eye, in a 
mine explosion.

What transformed him and his comrades-in-arms from anti-Soviet to 
anti-American militants, he says, was the way Washington abandoned them at
the end of the war in Afghanistan, and sought to disarm and disperse them.

"It was when the Americans took the knife out of the Russians and stabbed 
it in our back, it's as simple as that," says Abu Hamza. "It was a natural
turn, not a theoretical one.

"In the meantime, they were bombarding Iraq and occupying the [Arabian] 
peninsula," he says, referring to the US troops stationed in Saudi Arabia 
after the Gulf War, "and then with the witch-hunt against the mujahideen, 
all of it came together, that was a full-scale war, it was very clear."

Abu Hamza would rather see Islamic militants fight corrupt or secular Arab
governments before they take on America (indeed, the Yemeni government has 
sought his extradition from Britain for plotting to overthrow the 
government in Sana). But he is in no doubt that the American government 
brought the events of Sept. 11 on its own head.

"The Americans wanted to fight the Russians with Muslim blood, and they 
could only justify that by triggering the word 'jihad,'" he argues." 
Unfortunately for everybody except the Muslims, when that button is pushed,
it does not come back that easy. It only keeps going on and on until the
Muslim empire swallows every empire existing."

Can he understand the motivation behind the assault on New York and 
Washington? "The motivation is everywhere," he says, with the current US 
administration. "When a president stands up before the planet and says an 
American comes first, he is only preaching hatred. When a president stands
up and says we don't honor our missile treaty with the Russians, he is only
preaching arrogance. When he refuses to condemn what's happening in 
Palestine, he is only preaching tyranny.

"American foreign policy has invited everybody, actually, to try to 
humiliate America, and to give it a bloody nose," he adds.


In Jakarta, countering American culture without violence

You wouldn't catch Rizky "Jimmy" Nur Zamzamy justifying violence that way,
though he professes just as deep an attachment to Islam as Abu Hamza.

Mr. Zamzamy, a rangy young Indonesian advertising executive in a pink 
shirt, is sitting in a Western-style cafe in Jakarta, his cellphone at the
ready, and his fried chicken growing cold as he explains how he tries to be
a good Muslim by right action, not fighting.

That, he feels, is the best way of countering what he sees as the 
corrupting influence of American culture and morals on traditional 
Indonesian ways of life in the largest Muslim country in the world.

Until a few years ago, Zamzamy led a regular secular life, hanging out in 
bars and dating women. Then he met a Muslim teacher who became his 
spiritual guide. Now he follows Islamic teachings and donates most of his 
$1,300 monthly salary to his "guru" to be spent on building mosques and 
helping the poor.

He says he has made sure that none of the money goes to extremist groups 
that use violence in the name of Islam, such as the Laskar Jihad group, 
locked in bloody battle with Christians in the Maluku region of Indonesia.

Two years ago, in line with his growing religious beliefs, he quit the 
advertising agency he had worked for and set up his own company along 
Islamic lines: He won't take banks or alcoholic-beverage producers as 
clients, for example, and he does no business on Friday, the Muslim holy 
day.

But he is relaxed about those who don't share his beliefs: He does not 
insist that his wife wear a headscarf, for example, and he is not 
uncomfortable sitting alongside the rich young Jakartans in the cafe who 
are flirting and drinking. They must make their own choices, he says.

And though he does not like the sexual overtones of American pop culture, 
he knows that "you can't hide from American culture." By living his life 
according to Islamic precepts, he says, "I am fighting America in my own 
way. But I don't agree with violence."


Ambivalence about America

All over the Muslim world, young people like Zamzamy are juggling their 
sense of Islamic identity with the trappings of a globalized, secular 
society.

In a classroom of Al Khair University, set in a concrete office park in 
Islamabad, Nabil Ahmed, a business student, and his classmates are fuming 
over their president's betrayal of the Pakistani people by pledging to 
support what they fear will turn into a crusade against Muslims.

Ahmed and his friends are well-dressed, middle-class boys, and represent 
neither the old-money security of Pakistan's elite nor dirt-poor peasants 
who make up the bulk of Pakistan's angry conservative masses. They are the
silent majority of Pakistan, with their feet firmly planted in both the 
East and the West. On weekdays, they listen to Whitney Houston and Michael
Bolton, wear Dockers and Van Heusen shirts. On weekends, many switch to 
traditional salwar kameez outfits and go with their fathers to the mosque 
to pray.

They have much to gain from a Western style of life, and most have plans 
to move to the United States for a few years to make some money before 
returning home to Pakistan. Yet despite their attraction to the West, they
are wary of it too.

"Most of us here like it both ways, we like American fashion, American 
music, American movies, but in the end, we are Muslims," says Ahmed. "The 
Holy Prophet said that all Muslims are like one body, and if one part of 
the body gets injured, then all parts feel that pain. If one Muslim is 
injured by non-Muslims in Afghanistan, it is the duty of all Muslims of 
the world to help him."

Like his friends, Ahmed feels that America has double standards toward its
friends and enemies. America attacks Iraq if it invades Kuwait, but allows 
Israel to bulldoze Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It 
ostracizes a Muslim nation like Sudan for oppressing its Christian 
minority, but allows Russia to bomb its Muslim minority into submission in
Chechnya.

And while the US supported many "freedom fighter" movements in the past 
few decades, including the contra movement in Nicaragua, America labels 
Pakistan and Afghanistan as terrorist states because they support militant
Muslim groups fighting in the Indian state of Kashmir and elsewhere.

"There is only one way for America to be a friend of Islam," says Ahmed." 
And that is if they consider our lives to be as precious as their own. "If
Americans are concerned about the 6,500 deaths in the World Trade Center, 
let them talk also about the deaths in Kashmir, in Palestine, in Chechnya,
in Bosnia. It is this double standard that creates hatred."

Ahmed's ambivalence about America - his desire to live and work there, his
admiration for its values, but his anger at its behavior around the world -
is broadly shared across the Muslim world and Arab world.

"I think they hate us because of what we do, and it seems to contradict 
who we say we are," says Bruce Lawrence, a professor of religion at Duke 
University, referring to people in the Middle East. "The major issue that 
our policy seems to contradict our own basic values."

That seems clear enough to Muslims who sympathize with the Palestinians, 
and who say that Washington should force Israel to abide by United Nations
resolutions to withdraw from the occupied territories. "The Americans say 
September 11th was an attack on civilization," says Mr Hariri, the 
Lebanese prime minister. "But what does civilized society mean if not a 
society that lives according to the law?"

It also seems clear to citizens of monarchical states in the Gulf, where 
elections are unknown and women's rights severely restricted. "Since the 
Cold War ended, America has talked about promoting democracy," says John 
Esposito, head of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at 
Georgetown University in Washington. "But we don't do anything about it in
repressive regimes in the Middle East, so you can understand widespread 
anti-Americanism there."

At the same time, the state-run media - which is all the media there is 
across much of the Middle East - often fan the flames of anti-American and
anti-Israel sentiment because that helps focus citizens' minds on something
other than their own government's shortcomings.

In Sana, the Yemeni capital, where queues of visa-seekers line up daily 
outside the US embassy, the ambivalence about America is clear. "When you 
go there, you really love the United States," says Murad al-Murayri, a 
US-trained physicist. "You are treated like a human being, much better 
than in your own country. But when you go back home, you find the US 
applies justice and fairness to its own people, but not abroad. In this 
era of globalization, that cannot stand."

Nor has the mood that has gripped Washington over the past two weeks done 
much to reassure skeptics, says Fran¨ois Burgat, a French social scientist
in Yemen.

"When Bush says 'crusade', or that he wants bin Laden 'dead or alive', 
that is a fatwa (religious edict) without any judicial review", he 
cautions. "It denies all the principles that America is supposed to be."

A fatwa is something Amirul Haq, a Pakistani shopkeeper whose son died two
years ago in a jihad in Kashmir, understands better than judicial review." 
When I heard that my son died, I was satisfied," he says.

It's a sentiment shared by Azad Khan, too. On a hot Sunday afternoon in 
Mardan, Pakistan, Mr. Khan and his family have laid out a feast in a small
guesthouse next to the local mosque. They are celebrating because they have
just heard that Mr. Khan's 20-year-old son, Saeed, has been killed in a gun
battle with Indian troops in the part of Jammu and Kashmir state that is 
under Indian control. With his death, Saeed has become another shahid, a 
martyr and heroic defender of the Muslims against the enemies of Islam. 
According to the Koran, shahideen are not actually dead; they are still 
alive, they just can't be seen. And through acts of bravery, a shahid 
guarantees that his whole family will go to heaven.

"It is not a thing to be mourned. We are happy," says Khan, sitting down 
to a meal of chicken and mutton, rice and bread, along with leaders of the
group with which Saeed had fought. "I told him to take part in jihad [holy 
war] because he is the son of a Muslim," Khan says. "And just as we fight 
in Kashmir, if we need to fight against the United States in Afghanistan 
we are ready, because we are Muslims. It is our duty to fight against any 
infidels who are threatening our Muslim brothers."

It's not likely that many Pakistanis, or other Muslims, will actually go 
to Afghanistan to fight the Americans - assuming American soldiers land 
there. Khan's militant views are not shared by most of his countrymen.

But in a broader sense, and in the longer term, many people in the Middle 
East fear that the coming war against terrorism - unless it is waged with 
the utmost caution - could unleash new waves of anti-American sentiment.

Jamal al-Adimi, a US-educated Yemeni lawyer, speaks for many when he warns
that "if violence escalates, you bring seeds and water for terrorism. You 
kill someone's brother or mother, and you will just get more crazy people."

Trying to root out terrorism without re-plowing the soil in which it grows
- which means rethinking the policies that breed anti-American sentiment - 
is unlikely to succeed, say ordinary Middle Easterners and some of their 
leaders.

On the practical level, Hariri points out, "launching a war is in the 
hands of the Americans, but winning it needs everybody. And that means 
everybody should see that he has an interest in joining the coalition" 
that Washington is building.

On a higher level, argues Bassam Tibi, a professor of international 
relations at Gottingen University in Germany, and an expert on political 
Islam, "we need value consensus between the West and Islam on democracy 
and human rights to combat Islamic fundamentalism. We can't do it with 
bombs and shooting - that will only exacerbate the problem."

Reported by staff writers Scott Baldauf in Islamabad, Pakistan; Cameron W.
Barr in Amman, Jordan; Peter Ford in London; Nicole Gaouette in Jerusalem; 
Robert Marquand in Beijing; Scott Peterson in Sana, Yemen; Ilene R. 
Prusher in Tokyo; as well as contributors Nicholas Blanford in Beirut, 
Lebanon; Sarah Gauch in Cairo; and Simon Montlake in Jakarta, Indonesia.

* * *

How the world views a US military response 

In your opinion, once the identity of the terrorists is known, 
should the American governmemt launch a military attack 
on the country or countries where the terrorists are based, 
or should the American government seek to extradite 
the terrorists to stand trial? 

Country ........ Launch ........ Try the ....... Don't
................ Attack ........ terrorists .... know

Israel ......... 77% ........... 19% ............ 4%
India .......... 72 ............ 28 ............. 0
United States .. 54 ............ 30 ............ 16
Korea .......... 38 ............ 54 ............. 9
France ......... 29 ............ 64 ............. 4
Czech Republic . 22 ............ 64 ............ 14
Italy .......... 21 ............ 71 ............. 8
South Africa ... 18 ............ 75 ............. 7
United Kingdom . 18 ............ 75 ............. 7
(excluding N.Ireland)
Germany ........ 17 ............ 77 ............. 6
Bosnia ......... 14 ............ 80 ............. 6
Colombia ....... 11 ............ 85 ............. 4
Pakistan ........ 9 ............ 69 ............ 22
Greece .......... 6 ............ 88 ............. 6
Mexico .......... 2 ............ 94 ............. 3

Joan Rapaport - Staff
Source: Gallup International Surveys Sept. 14 To 17.

* * *

Source:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0927/p1s1-wogi.html