Now that the long awaited military action against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban has begun, the Europeans, while endorsing the US response, are also indulging in a vigorous debate about the core issue: why there is so much hatred against the US in the Muslim and Arab world?
Such debate is only possible in places that are far removed from the epicenter of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and by people who are not as deeply affected by the events of September 11. Close to home in America such debate is understandably lacking at least at this moment. The revulsion in the aftermath of the carnage is just too fresh, too deep and too pervasive to allow discussion of controversial issue that questions US foreign policy vis-à-vis the Arab and Muslim world and the phenomenon that turns devout people into ruthless killers.
While the refrain ‘why do they hate America?’ is often heard in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the Europeans, like Americans, are also finding it hard to define the all encompassing they. To some it includes most, if not all, Muslims and Arabs. Others go to great lengths to differentiate between the majority of Muslims and Arabs and the militancy of small fringe elements in those societies. It is the all-inclusive generalization that causes discomfort amongst the Muslim and Arabs living in Europe. If the whole has to be tarred for the actions of the few then the US and its Western allies are in for a protracted struggle against the fifth of the people living in this world.
Fortunately it is just not so. Most Europeans and Americans understand that the majority of Muslims and Arabs, though resentful of America’s big brother posture and some of its humiliating policies towards them, do not subscribe to the gospel of hate that is preached by the likes of bin Laden and his followers.
But his chilling message has invoked a visceral response from some of the most unlikely people in Europe. Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister asserted the superiority of Western civilization over the Islamic civilization and said that in this war the Western civilization would triumph. Sir John Keegan, the defense editor of the Daily Telegraph, echoed the same sentiments when he wrote that in this war of civilizations the West would prevail.
War of civilizations?
It did happen but that was a thousand years ago during the Crusades. Now the world is not divided into two distinct black and white camps where the likes of Saladin and Richard the Lionhearted are locked in a pitched battle to redeem the honor of their respective faiths or whatever else they thought needed redeeming. Luckily the Europeans do not take their cues from these later days Crusaders. Otherwise the ideological gulf between Islam and the Christian West is bound to widen.
Instead they are questioning the very definition of terrorism. They want to make sure the time-honored concepts of human rights, right of self-determination and a just struggle for one’s political rights are still valid. In the emerging New World Order amidst the drumbeat of war against terrorism, they ask the inevitable question: how do we deal with the festering issues of Kashmir, Palestine, Iraqi sanctions, Kurdish independence and the like? If East Timor could be helped by the international community to break away from Indonesia, why not the same for Kashmiris and Palestinians? On both of these issues the UN resolutions are clear but have been ignored and sidestepped. And what about Chechneya? Should the Russians be allowed to crush the Chechins for their struggle for independence now that the Russians have joined the war against terrorism?
Unless these fundamental questions are addressed in their proper context the war against terrorism would be an unending and futile effort.