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| Terrorism or intercultural dialogue?!?! |
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| amatullah |
| 08/21/03 at 23:12:52 |
| Terrorism or Intercultural Dialogue !??! Worlds in Collision Terror and the Future of Global Order Edited by Ken Booth and Time Dunne Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-99805-7 CHAPTER 24 Terrorism or Intercultural Dialogue Bhikhu Parekh How should we respond to terrorist attacks of the kind that occurred on September 11? The question has received several answers, of which two are most influential. First, some argue that the perpetrators of these evil acts are callous and inhuman monsters driven by a blind hatred of the West, especially the United States. Since they are non-state agents, they are strictly speaking not at war with us, but they are most certainly in a state of war with us. We have a duty to defend ourselves and to do everything in our power to put them out of action. We cannot reason with them because they are not rational beings but nihilists determined to inflict maximum harm on us. The only language they understand is that of force. They do, of course, claim in self-justification that they have grievances against us, which their peaceful appeals have failed to redress. However this is a specious argument. It turns every act of injustice into a licence for terrorism, and that is a recipe for chaos. What is more, the long terrorist list of injustices is largely suspect, for these so called injustices are the results of their own badly managed societies and cannot be blamed on us. And even if we bore responsibility for some of these, tackling or even discussing them now would widely be taken to legitimize terror. Second, some argue that while terrorist acts deserve to be punished or pre-empted, we also need to look at their context and causes. They do not occur in a historical and moral vacuum. Their agents are human beings like the rest of us, a mixture of good and evil, and do not enjoy throwing away their lives and turning their wives into widows and children into orphans. They risk their lives in terrorist acts because they feel humiliated, trampled upon, unjustly treated, and see no other way of redressing their grievances. Rather than concentrate only on their reprehensible deeds, we must address their deeper causes. We should not put terrorists outside the pale of rational discourse but engage in a dialogue with them, understand their grievances, see if they are genuine, ask ourselves whether we bear any responsibility for these, mend our ways when we think we do and, when we don't, persuade them why they need to put their own house in order. Although such a dialogue is not easy against the background of spectacular terrorist acts, it is absolutely essential. We have seen dead bodies and desperate struggles for safety, and heard heart-rending last-minute messages, all of which tend to overwhelm and unhinge us. It is therefore of the utmost importance that we should not lose our moral balance and perspective by allowing our sense of justice to remain trapped within the grip of vivid and horrifying images. Of the two, the first response, though understandable, is deeply flawed. It makes no attempt to understand the agents and the wider context of their actions, and all too conveniently dismisses them as inhuman monsters. Once they are so perceived, it becomes easier to argue that the only way to deal with them is to terrorize them, to treat them with such severity that neither they nor their supporters would ever dare to repeat these deeds. This reduces us to their level and weakens our moral authority to condemn them, for although our ends are infinitely superior our methods are the same. If terrorism is reprehensible, anti-terrorist terrorism is no better. When people are embittered and brutalized and prepared to throw away their lives, nothing we do to them will terrorize and deter them. Whatever we do to them only confirms their poor opinion of us and hardens their resolve. There is a limit to what we can do to intimidate and terrorize potential terrorists, and once these are exhausted, we are left without resources. By contrast, terrorist methods are limitless. When hijacking planes becomes difficult, planting bombs takes its place. When that is stopped, suicide bombing becomes common, extending to women and before long to children. And if that becomes impossible, biological warfare and hitherto unimagined forms of terror appear on the horizon. Liberal societies are by their very nature vulnerable to attacks at many different points. While their capacity to protect themselves is necessarily limited, there are no such limits on the opportunities available to the terrorist. It took only 20 determined terrorists to cause massive havoc in New York and Washington. It is inconceivable that millions of sulking and disaffected people from whose ranks they came cannot continue to throw up similar numbers in future. Terrorists require not only finances, training, and so on, but also a supportive or acquiescent body of people, a justifying ideology, and widely perceived grievances around which to mobilize support. Dismantling their networks is never enough; we also need to tackle their cultural and political roots and win the battle for the minds and hearts of ordinary people. This is why Western leaders have repeatedly insisted, sometimes disingenuously, that Islam is a religion of peace, that it does not justify suicide and killing the innocent, that their struggle is not against Muslims or Islam, and so on. Terrorism is both a military and a political problem, and cannot be tackled by military means alone. The initial response of the United States government to the events of September 11 was mature and belonged to the second type. While condemning the attacks and vowing to bring their perpetrators to justice, its spokesmen appreciated the need to address their deeper causes. Increasingly the United States government began to veer towards the first response and is now firmly committed to it. Several factors seem to have played a part in this change, such as the relative ease with which the Taliban government was removed, the Israeli government's intransigence, domestic electoral considerations, the temptation to settle old scores with Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other states, the excitement of flexing the military muscle, and the heightened sense of existence offered by the incredible upsurge in American patriotism and sense of national solidarity. Whatever the explanation, hunting down and eliminating potential terrorists and deterring others is now more or less the sole objective. Prisoners taken in Afghanistan are not only harshly treated but humiliated, partly out of a sense of revenge and partly to strike terror in the hearts of their sympathizers. Over 1000 foreign nationals have been arrested with little explanation, and many are still being held though none has been charged. Ordinary legal processes are suspended in favour of military tribunals with the power to execute suspects on the basis of evidence neither disclosed to them nor subject to their challenge. Every country that is suspected of supporting potential terrorists is declared a legitimate military and economic target and threatened with dire consequences. The whole world is divided up into friends and foes. The latter, the 'axis of evil', are under intense pressure; and the former are told that even if they strongly disagree, America will go its own way. The United States is the sole judge of who is or is not a potential terrorist, and the sole executioner of its verdict. Welcoming this exclusive reliance on the big stick, Charles Krauthammar wrote in the Washington Post that the United States must create the 'psychology of fear' in order to command 'deep respect for the American power'. As one would expect in these circumstances, the US government's rhetoric and behaviour are sadly beginning to display a remarkable resemblance to those of the terrorists. The latter call the United States an evil civilization; the United States says the same about them. They say they are fighting for 'eternal moral verities', the United States says it is fighting for values that are 'right and unchanging for all people everywhere'. They say that every state working in league with the United States is a legitimate target; the United States says the same. Terrorists aim to create global fear by demonstrating that even the centres of American financial and military power are not beyond their reach; the United States aims to do the same. Both claim divine blessings for their respective projects; both talk of a clash of civilizations, a long and bitter war, and a fight to the finish; both want to stand and act alone, are driven by rage and hatred, and claim absolute superiority for their respective ways of life. All this goes to show how mistaken it is to adopt the first, punitive approach and to see terrorism as an exclusively military problem. The United States ends up becoming the mirror image of its enemy and profoundly corrupting the integrity of its way of life. It is led to cut legal and moral corners, to violate the rule of law, to authorize intelligence agencies to do things that transgress international norms, to interfere in the national lives of vulnerable states, to militarize the psyche of its own people, and to encourage dangerous passions. As I observed earlier, such methods rarely succeed in achieving their objectives and only end up escalating the spiral of violence. Given its fairly extensive list of terror-sponsoring states, the United States also risks getting dragged into wars on many different fronts, making enemies, provoking widespread hostility, and so on - precisely what it needs to avoid and what the terrorists desperately desire. The Muslim population in the world is likely to form about a quarter of the world population by 2024, and the United States cannot afford to alienate vast masses of them, especially as it badly needs access to their vast and vitally necessary reserves of gas and oil. I suggest that the only effective way to counter terrorism is to adopt the second approach outlined above. Potential terrorists and their sponsors or supporters must obviously be deterred by all legitimate means, including carefully gathered intelligence, financial squeeze, domestic vigilance and, when necessary, a judicious use of force. At the same time we must also address the deeper roots of terrorism that drive otherwise decent men and women to build up enormous rage and hatred, and so blunt their moral sensibilities that they cannot see anything wrong in taking innocent lives. We need to reassure them that injustices worry us as much as they worry them, that they can count on us to tackle these, that they do not need to take the law into their own hands, and that we are partners in a common cause. International terrorism is not caused by poverty and global inequality. The poor and the oppressed know that their enemies are located within their countries. And although Western prosperity attracts them, they do not resent or hate it and seek instead to become part of it by legal or illegal immigration. They obviously wish, as does any morally sensitive person, that the West would use its resources and influence to eliminate poverty and minimize global inequalities in its own long-term interest as well as for humanitarian reasons, but they do not go and bomb Western cities. The West arouses their anger and hatred only when, in their view, it bears at least some responsibility for their predicament, either by propping up the domestic system of injustice or by inflicting additional injustices and humiliations on them. If we are to tackle the roots of terrorism, we need to enter their world of thought, understand their grievances and explore why they think we bear responsibility for these. This calls for a dialogue between Western and non-Western societies, especially Muslim societies whose sense of injustice is the most acute and from which almost all the recent terrorists have sprung. The point of the dialogue is to deepen mutual understanding, to expand sympathy and imagination, to exchange not only arguments but also sensibilities, to take a critical look at oneself, to build up mutual trust, and to arrive at a more just and balanced view of both the contentious issues and the world in general. The dialogue cannot achieve these objectives if it is reduced to a public relations exercise, or is too frightened to offend, or too obsessed with political correctness to be honest. It must be robust, frank and critical, telling the truth as each party sees it, but always in the knowledge that the dialogue cannot be allowed to fail, for the only alternative to it is violence and bloodshed. In order that the dialogue can permeate and shape the consciousness of decision makers, commentators and ordinary citizens, it should occur at all levels ranging from serious academic discussions to international conferences, the United Nations and the popular media in Western and Muslim societies. |
| Re: Terrorism or intercultural dialogue?!?! |
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| amatullah |
| 08/21/03 at 23:13:11 |
| The dialogue is necessarily multi stranded and at various levels. It is obviously about substantive economic, political and other issues, the immediate causes of conflict and violence. Since all such issues have historical roots and are embedded in historical memories, the dialogue also has an inescapable historical dimension, and involves arriving at a broadly agreed view of the past. And since human beings define their interests and identities and their relations with others from within their culture, the dialogue has a strong cultural component as well. We cannot hope to understand why Muslim societies feel strongly about certain issues or define them in certain ways unless we understand their wider systems of meaning and values or cultures. And similarly Muslim societies cannot understand the West without understanding the internal structure, dynamics and tensions of Western civilization. The dialogue between Western and Muslim societies thus moves freely between substantive issues and their historical interpretations and cultural contexts, and is necessarily complex and messy. Contrary to the current rhetoric, there can be no clash between cultures or civilizations. Cultures do not speak or fight; rather, people speak and fight from within and about their cultures. Cultures, further, are not homogeneous wholes and contain different strands and currents of thought. Cultures or civilizations therefore do not clash, only their particular strands and interpretations do. There is no inherent clash between Islam and the West. Some strands within Islam fit nicely with some strands within the West, and on some readings of them, Islamic and Western civilizations share much in common. It all depends on what one takes to be their central values and how one interprets these. Islam is not a homogeneous entity with an unchanging essence. There are in fact many Islams just as there are many Wests. The Indian Islam is different from the Saudi, and both are different from their Indonesian, Afghan, Iranian, Tunisian and Bosnian counterparts. And each of these is internally contested. Ayatollah Khomeini's politicized and militant understanding of Islam was fiercely attacked by several traditionalist Ayatollahs, who thought it a profound distortion of Islam and insisted on a clear separation between religion and the state, a view for which some of them were placed under house arrest. As for the West, it is made up of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of views and values derived from very different sources. And since different Western societies interpret and combine them differently, no two Western societies or their cultures or forms of Christianity are exactly alike. Since all societies are internally diverse, we should not homogenize them, generalize about them, or allow anyone the sole authority to speak for them. Furthermore, they all have admirable and abominable qualities, this being as true of the Western as of Muslim societies, and none should be demonized or declared `evil'. For that very reason, each needs to be critical of itself and avoid the deadly vices of self-righteousness and moral arrogance. A society unable to engage in a critical dialogue with itself and tolerate disagreement is unable to engage in a meaningful dialogue with others. It is only when participants recognize and respect these basic conditions of a dialogue that the latter can be meaningful. Muslim and Western Voices I have argued above for a dialogue between Western societies, especially the United States, and Muslim societies.' How would such a dialogue proceed? Each would obviously speak with different voices and emphasize different things about itself and the other. In order to get to the heart of their deepest disagreements, I shall simplify and polarize the dialogue and sketch, on the basis of the utterances of their intellectuals and political leaders, what each thinks and would want to say to the other. I shall begin with the kind of opening statement Muslim leaders might make. You, the United States of America, are driven by an overweening ambition to dominate the world. Since you enjoy military superiority over the whole of the rest of the world put together, a dominance without parallel in human history, you want to use it to turn other societies into pliant instruments of your will. You have used vulnerable states to serve your interests and left them in a mess when they outlived their value. Despite all your talk of human rights and democracy, whenever progressive forces emerged in many parts of the world, you subverted them, as when you toppled Mussadiq in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo and Allende in Chile; when you trained and helped terrorists in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Angola and Argentina; when you endorsed the mass murders of Samuel Doe, Suharto and Pinochet, and when you invaded Grenada. You were so determined to avenge your defeat in Vietnam and destabilize the Soviet Union that you stoked powerful religious passions in Afghanistan and armed and trained Mujahideen and Islamic terrorists without any thought for the long-term danger this posed to Afghanistan and Pakistan. To contain Iran, you encouraged a most brutal war between it and Iraq. And when the latter thought it could count on your support and punish Kuwait for helping itself with Iraqi oil during its war with Iran, you sent it mixed messages. And when it foolishly invaded Kuwait, you hit it hard, imposed on it impossible conditions, and continue with a regime of punitive sanctions. You have been grossly biased in your response to the Israel -Palestine conflict, demanding impossible concessions from the Palestinians and endorsing the belligerence of Ariel Sharon, a man with a shabby past who is disowned by the progressive forces in his own country. You are Israel's staunch ally but not its true friend. You well know that Israel is a small country, that the Arabs will one day become strong and prosperous, and that they would then seek to avenge the humiliations and injustices the current Israeli govern ment continues to heap on them. Israel has no choice but to continue to depend on your contingent goodwill, to militarize its way of life, and to distort its great inspiring ideals. 1 f you were its true friend, you would in its own long-term interest tell it a few home truths. You would not, partly because of the obvious pressure of the misguided Israeli lobby and partly because you want to tie that talented country to your apron string, make it do your dirty job in that region, and use its quarrels with its neighbours to sell them arms and increase your power over them. You are firmly convinced that your way of life is the best, that you represent 'the city on the hill', and that you have a God-given right to shape the rest of the world in your image. You are determined to turn the world into a consumerist paradise, inhabited by self-absorbed and self satisfied people who like their Coca-Cola and hamburgers, their Hollywood movies, their freedom to do as their fancy dictates, and who are guided by no deeper moral and spiritual goals. You do not appreciate that the good life can be lived in several different ways; some better than others, but none absolutely the best. Your way of life has its obvious merits such as extensive liberties, personal autonomy, vibrant civil society, material comforts, enormous self-confidence and the spirit of equality, but it also has its limitations. It breeds aggression, self-centerdness, corporate stranglehold over the political process, media manipulation of public opinion, absence of mutual concern, blindness to the limitations of the human will, callousness to those who cannot compete, and so on. While other societies have much to learn from you, you too can learn much from them. Rather than cherish and foster the rich diversity of the multicultural world, you aggressively universalize your way of life, dismissing those who resist you as 'medieval' and even evil. With that end in mind, you push for globalization, deregulation, the opening up of domestic markets, the dismantling of the public sector, and structural adjustment programmes, so that your poorly regulated multinationals can have a free run of the whole world. When your direct pressure does not work, you use the IMF and the World Bank to achieve this goal as if these international agencies were nothing more than branches of your Treasury. While exhorting the rest of the world to respect international law and treaties, you flout them at will. You refused to ratify the Kyoto Treaty on climate change, the International Criminal Court, and the ban on anti personnel landmines and biological weapons, and you refused to pay your dues to the United Nations. You unilaterally decided to break the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, and you walked out of the Durban Conference on racism when its agreed protocol did not go your way. You are becoming a moral free-rider, benefiting from others' willingness to discharge their share of the collective burden but refusing to discharge yours when it damages your short-term interest. I f you are not careful you risk being branded an arrogant bully who would only relate to the world on its own terms. Your enormous power has rightly made you a world leader and you have the potential to be a great force for good. Sadly, you insist on behaving like a self-absorbed nation state pursuing its narrow interest behind the rhetoric of world leadership. You display a powerful Manichean thrust. The world for you is made up of 'goodies' and 'baddies'. You and those who go along with you represent the former; the rest are evil and must be defeated. You define your identity in terms of a real or imaginary hostile other, are constantly looking for enemies, and are at peace with yourself only when at war with others. For 40 years, you fought the Cold War and caused much havoc. When that ended, you found a new enemy in the shape of Islamic fundamentalism. You have now found another in Islamic terrorism, and your war with it will, in your own words, keep you busy for a long rime. This will boost your arms industry, will help the Republicans win the forth coming congressional and even the presidential election, will promote right-wing social and economic agendas, and will give you the opportunity to settle old scores with some countries. A cynic might think that you needed Osama bin Laden's blood-curdling rhetoric to give your collective life moral meaning and-purpose. It is about time you asked yourself why your civilization has become so war-dependent and militarist, and why you scare the rest of the world, including your friends. Muslims have remained backward, divided and confused, and that has spawned fundamentalism and even terrorism. The blame for that lies at the doors of the colonial powers, and more recently at yours. You support despotic and feudal regimes in Muslim societies, and actively help them or at least acquiesce when they crush democratic movements. Can you think of one occasion when you sincerely and actively supported the latter? Divided, ill governed and oppressed Muslim masses turn to their radically redefined religion to generate a sense of community, to mobilize their moral resources, to fight corruption, to forge unity with other Muslim societies, to regain a sense of pride, and to live out their vision of the good society. You feel frightened because religion does not fit into your secular world view, rejects some of your rules of the game, and mobilizes Muslim masses around causes that threaten your interests. You therefore increase your support for oppressive forces, and further alienate and embitter the masses. They are not by nature or habit anti-Western or anti-American, but are made so by your actions. They are drawn to fundamentalists because the latter play up anti American sentiments and promise to stand up to you. Terrorism is one way to do this.' It is the only form of power available to the weak, the only means of asserting their pride and drawing attention to their anger and injustice. You are wrong to think that they are 'jealous' of your way of life or 'resent' your prosperity and power. Since they have no wish to follow your way of life, they cannot be jealous of it. And they do not want your power and wealth either because their goals and ideals are different. All they want is to get you off their backs so they can freely build their way of life. Millions of Muslims strongly disapprove of the terrorist attacks on you, for these go against the basic principles of Islam, give it a bad name, endanger the lives of Muslims in the West, and invite reprisals. However, they understand the anger and frustration that inspired these evil deeds, appreciate the sacrifices and altruism of their perpetrators, and cannot honestly condemn them without qualification. They are keen to help you to put an end to such acts if only you would agree to mend your ways and join them in exploring how best to redress their long-festering grievances. I have briefly sketched the kind of honest opening statement Muslim spokesmen might make in their dialogue with the West. For its part, the latter would want to make an equally robust statement, which might take the following form. You, Muslims, misleadingly claim that yours is a religion of peace. Islam is an absolutist religion claiming superiority over all others and driven by the hegemonic ambition to convert the world to its way of life. It insists that the Qur'an is the sole authentic and exhaustive revelation of God, and that Mohammed is the last of the prophets. It pours scorn on the so-called idolatrous religions including Hinduism which it has despised for centuries, and on such others as Confucianism which in its view are not religions at all. It does, of course, show respect for Judaism and Christianity but only as primitive first drafts of Islam, and takes a somewhat patronizing view of Moses and Jesus. This is why Islam extends its proselytizing activities to their followers, never granted the latter full equality, and harasses them in countries where it is in power. It is true that Islam is currently engaged in a dialogue with these religions. However, should not read too much into this. The initiative for the dialogue 1a' come not from Islam but from them. The dialogue is confined to a few, intellectuals, is limited to areas of mutual cooperation, and is not allowed to challenge Islam's belief in its absolute superiority. And Islam has welcomed it in order to neutralize these two powerful religions and enjoy the freedom to carry on its proselytizing activities elsewhere. You are not content to assert the absolute superiority of your religion. You are also driven by a hegemonic political ambition. You constantly hark back to your 'glorious' period of military and political expansion, your rule over large parts of Europe, Asia and elsewhere, the Ottoman Empire, and so on. You resent Europe for defeating and marginalizing you, and now want to replace the West as a global power. This is why you want to unite the umma, to exploit your natural resources of gas and oil, to use these to challenge the West and build up your economic power, and to acquire sophisticated nuclear and other destructive technology. You have imperialist designs, and your attack on Western or American imperialism is not born out of a sincere desire to get rid of all imperialism but is part of a larger strategy to impose your own. You talk of your great civilization and its superiority to ours. Nothing can be further from the truth. No Muslim society today has much to be proud of. All are corrupt, autocratic, degenerate, materialist, violent, and oppressive of their minorities, women and dissident sects. You claim that this is because they are not truly Islamic and have bartered away the true principles of Islam for the consumerist idolatry of the secular West. This is nonsense. No two Muslims are agreed on what a truly Islamic society is like. For some only the umma can be the legitimate unit of governance; others justify the existing nation states. For some, Islam requires communal ownership of property; others disagree. For some, it requires rule by the mullah; for others, it calls for a moderately secular state. Indeed, since the general and vague statements of the Qur'an can be interpreted in different ways, the very idea of a truly Islamic state is deeply problematic. Furthermore, whenever a self-styled 'truly' Islamic state has come into existence, it has turned out to be worse than others. The Taliban regime was endorsed by many a fundamentalist Muslim including bin Laden. The regime was most oppressive and brutal, raping women whose chastity it claimed to safeguard by imposing the veil, persecuting Shi'as, grossly abusing political power, plundering public property, harassing followers of other religions, destroying rare Buddhist statues, and so on. You blame the West for your current predicament. You could not be more mistaken. Many non-Muslim societies have had no difficulty developing themselves. There is no reason why you should have lagged so far behind. Many of you sit on vast natural resources, and could have used these to modernize yourselves as well as the less well-resourced members of the umma. The West did support some of your despotic rulers. However, all states, including the Muslim states, pursue their interests, and it is wrong to expect the West to be altruistic. What is more, it was and is open to your leaders to organize your masses around a democratic agenda. You either did not do so or did it in a manner that failed to resonate with popular aspirations. It is most irresponsible of you to blame the West for not fighting your battles for you and not giving you a democratic system on a platter. It is about time you began to think and behave as adults taking charge of your destiny rather than as children passively praying for a Western Santa Claus to bring you the gifts of new ideas and institutions. You argue that you disapprove of fundamentalism and terrorism, and that those involved are mad people who have hijacked your great religion. This is an intellectual and political cop-out. It does not explain why your religion was hijacked, why there was no resistance, why this happened in some but not other Muslim countries, and why a powerful alternative view of Islam was not developed and canvassed by your leaders. The responsibility for the corruption and misuse of your religion lies fairly and squarely on the shoulders of your political, religious and intellectual leaders. They need to take a most critical look at it and ask what tendencies within it are susceptible to fundamentalist and terrorist interpretations and need to be fought or reinterpreted. They must also explore how Islam can come to terms with modernity, including modern science, liberal and democratic values, the spirit of critical inquiry, and independent thought. These and other ideas are an inescapable part of our collective life today, and also have much to be said for them. Islam needs to engage in a critical dialogue with them, adopting what is valuable and rejecting what is shallow and misguided. Contrary to what your conservative leaders say, millions of Muslims when given a choice have opted for many a Western value and practice, such as the freedom to challenge orthodoxy, to choose a career, to run their lives themselves, to protest against oppression and injustices, to enjoy the normal pleasures of life, to read Western literature, and to watch Western movies. It is about time you acknowledged the reality of these and other choices, and provided viable alternatives to the naively antimodernist readings of your traditions and religion. I have sketched above the broadest outlines of the discursive framework within which a badly needed dialogue can take place between Western and Muslim societies. The views I have attributed to each side are based on the public and private remarks of their spokesmen, and are inevitably partisan, extreme, polemical, hurtful and sometimes deeply offensive. Since they are widely held and form the often unarticulated background against which each perceives and relates to the other, they need to be stated, confronted and carefully examined. Some of the points made by each against the other are likely to be fiercely resisted by the latter; others are based on ignorance or wilful or honest misunderstanding; yet others are accepted by at least the more reflective among them. Neither the Western nor even most Muslim societies are monolithic. Each has its internal critics, and can count on them to treat these criticisms with respect and use them to take a fresh and careful look at their society. The dialogue is at various levels, and the consensus secured at one level facilitates it at others. The dialogue is about specific political issues and conflicts, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, sanctions on Iraq, American support for the Saudi regime, the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and global inequality and poverty. Our aim here should be to ensure that each side better understands the concerns and constraints of the other and strives to reach a mutually acceptable compromise. The dialogue is also about the interpretation and legacy of history such as the past Western interferences with Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and our hope here is that each side will, through better mutual understanding, lift the burden of history and learn to face the future with a fresh and charitable perspective. The dialogue at the cultural level is the most challenging, but it cannot be avoided. While some contentious issues can be tackled by themselves, others cannot, and even the former will not have a lasting solution unless they are embedded in better intercultural understanding. Our hope here is that Western and Muslim societies (as well as all others) will avoid the interrelated vices of narcissism and demonization of the other, will appreciate each other's strengths and inadequacies, and will develop over time a shared global perspective in which deep differences are admitted but not allowed to get out of control. 3 Notes 1. For a further discussion, see my Rethinking Multiculturalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, and Harvard University Press, 2000). 2. `When the world is so thoroughly monopolised, when power is so frighteningly consolidated by the technocratic machine and the dogma of globalisation, what means are there for turning the tables but terrorism? In dealing all strong cards to itself, the system forced the Other to change the rules of the game.' Jean Baudrillard in Le Monde, November 2, 2001. 3. `... in closing the door on the era of sovereign independence and American security, anarchic terrorism has opened a window for those who believe that social injustice, unregulated wild capitalism and an aggressive secularism that leaves no space for religion and civil society not only create conditions on which terrorism feeds but invite violence in the name of rectification. As a consequence, we are at a seminal moment in our history - one in which trauma opens up the possibility of new forms of action.' Benjamin Barber, The Nation, January, 21, 2002. This wise and courageous remark deserves sympathetic attention. |
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