Posted on 12/16/2004 4:11:12 AM PST by milestogo
| Monday, December 13, 2004 | |
| A new think tank challenges views about Islam |
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| By Patrick Seale
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This week saw the formal initiation in London of a major international think tank, Conflicts Forum, dedicated to forging a new and healthier relationship between the West and the world of Islam. A second start is to follow in Beirut in the week of Dec. 12-18, when a founder of the forum will explain its aims to the Arab media and will hold meetings with representatives of Islamic groups, including Hizbullah and Hamas. The creation of Conflicts Forum is a development of major importance because it is the first systematic attempt by a new Western institution to challenge the view propagated by Washington neoconservatives that the West is engaged in a life-and-death struggle with militant Islam. Ever since the terrorist attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001, right-wing officials and lobbyists in the United States, several of them close to Ariel Sharon's Likud Party in Israel, have sought to demonize Islam and portray it as a deadly threat to Western societies. These views were embraced at the highest level in the U.S., and to some extent in Britain as well, where the notion took hold that, for the West to be secure, militant Muslim groups had to be destroyed and Muslim societies had to be reformed, if necessary by force. The decision to wage war in Iraq followed a global manhunt in pursuit of anyone suspected of sympathy for the cause of militant Islam. The same attitude inspires the current U.S. campaign of seeking to impose democracy on the Arab world in order to "defeat terror." The conflict between the U.S. and a worldwide Islamic insurgency has become the most explosive issue in the world today. The Middle East arena has become the epicenter of the world crisis. Almost every day brings news of a violent clash somewhere, whether the assault a week ago by Al-Qaeda gunmen on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, the destruction by U.S. forces of Fallujah, or the murder by an Islamic radical of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the author of a provocative film on the treatment of women in Islam. His killing set off a wave of attacks on mosques in Holland. Across Europe, not only in Holland but also in Germany and France, there is evidence that the integration of Muslim immigrants has not always been successful and has led to severe tensions, sharpened by Israel's brutal repression of the Palestinians and by the war in Iraq. Because it was waged on the basis of false premises, the Iraq war has aroused tremendous controversy in many parts of the world - including inside the intelligence and diplomatic services of Britain and the U.S. In recent months, senior retired officials have sharply criticized the Middle East policies of their governments. In London last week, an eminent group of nearly 40 ambassadors, military commanders and senior politicians sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair urging him to set up an official enquiry into the claim - made in October by the medical journal The Lancet - that the Iraq war has caused the death of up to 100,000 Iraqi civilians. The founders of Conflicts Forum denounce the "climate of fear" promoted by Washington neoconservatives. Rebelling against official Western orthodoxy that perceives Islamism as a hostile ideology, they have set themselves the ambitious task of promoting a "new engagement" with Islam based on dialogue, mutual respect and tolerance. Alastair Crooke, one of the forum's founders, is a former British diplomat and Middle East expert, who among many other posts served as special security adviser to Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief. He coordinated negotiations and mediation between all the parties in the Arab-Israeli conflict, establishing valuable personal contacts. "We need to demonstrate," he declares, "that there is an alternative relationship between the West and Islam other than one defined by laying waste of Fallujah!" Conflicts Forum is, in effect, a club of disaffected diplomats and intelligence officers, who have been joined by prominent figures from the fields of politics, business, academia and religion. The forum has raised funds from charitable foundations, companies, individual donors and governments. It is planning a major fund-raising drive in the United States in the new year and appeals to Muslim movements and governments to support its campaign for a "new engagement" between the West and Islam. Conflicts Forum has set up a separate but linked body called Conflicts Forum Consultancy (CFC) to provide selected clients with strategic analysis of world problems and political risks. Through an international network of contacts and offices, CFC is present in several world capitals. Over the past year, it has held meetings with the European Union, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. State Department, the National Security Council, as well as several international organizations. It has also briefed Western and Arab diplomatic missions in London, Brussels and Washington. The message Conflicts Forum is seeking to propagate may be summed up in a few simple propositions: The worsening estrangement between the West and Islam is a source of grave concern; This estrangement has brought suffering to Muslims in many parts of the world and has also damaged Western societies by severe restrictions on civil liberties; Muslim values pose no threat to Western societies. In fact, Muslims overwhelmingly share a desire for free elections, popular participation and effective, noncorrupt government; Caught in their ideological straitjacket, Western governments cannot remedy the situation. Ordinary people must act and speak out for themselves in support of dialogue and of a "listening" between peoples; A basic belief of the founders of Conflicts Forum is the need to recognize the "other" and change the ways in which the West engages with the Muslim world; With this in mind, the forum is undertaking a study of the various currents in political Islam and plans to share its findings with Western policymakers and the public. A more controversial aspect of the Forum's approach is what it describes as the need to stimulate a rigorous understanding in the West of the causes and varied nature of "armed political action" by Islamic groups and to distinguish this from what is usually labeled as "terrorism." The Forum believes it is a fundamental mistake to label Hizbullah and Hamas as terrorist organizations, and seek to isolate them - as the European Union has done under American and Israeli pressure. On the contrary, Conflicts Forum argues that it is essential to bring these groups into the political process and, in the Palestinian case, to include them in the leadership of the national movement. Swimming against the current is never easy. The coming year will demonstrate whether Conflicts Forum can convince the public, the press and the policymakers that a new Western perception of Islam is not only possible but urgently necessary.
Patrick Seale, a veteran Middle East analyst, wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR |
How about promoting a vigorous understanding in the Islamic world that butchering people is wrong???
That the world wide butchering causes the West to hate and distrust Islam?
Groan. I read the first line with an honest glimmer of hope, as the US middle east / Islam policy is certainly in need of some new ideas/approaches. Unfortunately, what follows is unadulterated garbage.
I am all in favor of getting rid of labels. Let's call them barbarians who kill women and children and deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth.
What a steamin' pile.
Oh, never mind. Mustn't be suspicious. Just because they don't believe blowing up schoolbusses and pizza parlors necessarily qualifies as terrorism doesn't mean they're a front.
Is Bill Clinton involved in this? It sounds much like the Clinton "Foreign Policy"....let's hold focus groups and all-nighter pizza party discussions, and maybe we can come together (oops, wrong term to use in a reply that includes Clinton's name) in peace, harmony, and understanding. Not!!! What a bunch of soft-headed ostriches.
I did learn something from this article. Bin Laden is not a terrorist, but an armed political activist. He has an acute and urgent need for psychological and social counselling, his rights and access to which have been unfairly denied by the massive presence of the US terrorist forces in the region.
Gee...this sounds so reasonable until you realize that mothers are naming their sons after Bin Laden. And those grizzly beheading films on Al Jeezera don't help much either.
"Muslim values pose no threat to Western societies"...
You mean, the policy of beheading hostages, homicide bombings, and flying hijacked airliners into crowded buildings - all apparently part of "muslim values" - really pose no threat to Western societies? Who knew??? The "fatwa" issesd by bin laden - seeking the murder of Americans anywhere they can be found - poses no threat? Again, who'da thunk??? That bin laden's promise to destroy America with nuclear weapons poses no threat?
Get you heads out of your arses, laddies, and STASTFU if you can't contribute something substantial toward solving the muslim issue. My Lord, we have enough hand wringers and pansies on the left here in America to handle all the wailing, let alone having a bunch of pommies and other smelly Euros telling us how to handle the "muslim situation".
a,
I might add how it's no threat that Iran starts every legislative function and sporting event by chanting "Death to America", and Iranian missile transporters on parade with the words "We Will Crush America Beneath Our Feet" written down their length are of course no threat, and the long-standing public policy of several muslim governments of destroying Israel is entirely non-threatening.
If a muslim society spent half as much time creating or inventing than in destroying or making up conspiracy theories, the whole world might be better off.
Sometimes Muslims even show a sense of humor.
Dunno. Anything there about midnight basketball?
Islam's prohibition of introspection makes it the "big lie."
I think Goebbels would look admiringly at Islam's use of propaganda. The only problem is that Islam has created a vast delusional culture that seeks to dominate the world.
In Islamic cultures around the world, it can truly be said that the patients are running the asylum.
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