The New Nation - Internet Edition

Chandra Muzaffar

What would be the purpose of an Islam- West Dialogue? It would be to enhance understanding and empathy between the two civilizations.

In the wake of the 9-11 catastrophe, there has been a plethora of conferences and seminars in different parts of the world devoted to the challenge of fostering this Islam-West Dialogue. A number of government leaders, former government leaders, diplomats, religious personalities, academics and civil society activists have been involved in these dialogues. And yet the chasm between the two civilizations has been growing wider and wider. Almost every public opinion poll conducted in the last two years or so suggests that Muslim attitudes towards the United States of America in particular have become even more negative just as American attitudes towards Islam and Muslims have become more unfavourable.

What explains this? If Dialogue has failed, it is primarily because most champions of Dialogue do not want to address the underlying cause of the widening chasm between the two civilizations. Instead, these champions, especially leaders of government in certain Western countries, have chosen to focus upon what they regard as 'the tendency of Muslims to resort to terror in pursuit of their global agenda'. It is the Muslim and sometimes his religion that are often subjected to scrutiny. It is the Muslim who is the problem. It is the Muslim who has to be examined; to be placed on the psychiatric couch to determine what is really wrong with him.

Most Western rulers do not want to admit that it is because of their wrongdoings - specifically the misdeeds of American, British, and one should add, Israeli, elites - that a fringe within the Muslim world has decided to seek remedy through wanton violence. It was because the US had stationed its soldiers in Saudi Arabia in 1991 that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden directed the killing of American airmen at the Dharan military base a few years later. He viewed the American military presence in 'the land of the two holy mosques' as an act of sacrilege. The Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 has given rise to the systematic, organized violence that we witnessing in that country today. Even the so-called Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq is a by-product of the politics of occupation. It was after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that the Hizbullah emerged as a liberation movement committed to armed struggle. Because Palestine is an occupied land, the Israeli occupiers have become the targets of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Occupation then is a huge barrier to dialogue and understanding between Muslims and people in the West. Occupation however is part and parcel of a bigger phenomenon: the hegemonic power of the US ands its allies. Hegemony, in all its manifestations - from its military dimension to its cultural embodiment - negates any endeavour to develop empathy between the two civilizations. The vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East are acutely aware of what motivates US led hegemony especially as it impacts upon them. It is because of the US desire to control oil and to strengthen the position of Israel that the Middle East is at the top of the US's hegemonic agenda. What many do not know is that the US helmed quest for global hegemony is also driven by the determination to preserve and enhance corporate, casino, consumer (3C) capitalism.

Needless to say, US hegemony will have to end if understanding and empathy are to replace the prevailing distrust and animosity between the West, specifically the US, and the Muslim world, particularly those who live in the Middle East. Muslims, like other victims of hegemony, notably the people of Latin America, will continue to resist hegemony.

They should not however resort to violence. For violence, especially if it targets civilians, debases the struggle against hegemony. It allows the hegemon, with its control over the global media, to tarnish the public image of the resister. Besides, violence by its very nature is a repudiation of dialogue and engagement.

Of course, even if there was no hegemony and no violence as a reaction to hegemony, there would still be hurdles in the path of dialogue between Islamic and Western civilizations. Most of these hurdles are internal to both civilizations. Within the Muslim world, there are groups that are guilty of religious exclusivism which obstructs dialogue.

They provide such narrow, dogmatic interpretations to Islamic teachings in matters pertaining to non-Muslim minorities, the status of women, certain cultural and social practices and in the application of shariah (Islamic Law), that they alienate not just the non-Muslims but also a significant segment of the Muslim community. Mainstream Western society, in spite of its espousal of universal values and human rights, remains suspicious of 'The Other', especially the Muslim Other.

This prejudiced attitude towards the Muslim is to some extent the product of more than a thousand years of history milestoned by calamities such as the crusades and colonialism.

This is why it is important that both the West and the Muslim world undertake to examine themselves critically, while engaging in dialogue with the other. Introspection is vital at this juncture for it is only through a critical re-assessment of one's own attitudes and worldviews that one would be able to understand and empathize with the other. In other words, to reach out one has to reach within.

Are there groups in the West and the Muslim world who are looking at themselves critically while seeking to engage the other? There are. In both Europe and North America, there are secular and religious groups which are totally opposed to US led hegemony and are, at the same time, dialoguing with Muslims in their midst and those who are living in the Muslim heartlands of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Similarly, there are more and more Muslims in Asia, Africa and the Middle East who are not only critical of US hegemony but are also conscious of the shortcomings in their own societies, including the way in which religion is understood and practised.

It is these groups which are capable of forging a genuine bond of empathy between the West and the Muslim world.