New Literature for a New Era

THE WHY QUESTION

At the same time, America – and the world – need to go beyond the question of the “act” and the “actor” and include in their deliberations and analysis a third component to the gory equation of September 11. America and the world must seriously focus on the “Why?” question.

Whoever did this horrendous thing, we must ask, what was the motivation behind it? What rationalization, no matter how twisted and wrong, could have led anyone to the perpetration of a horror of this kind?

If Muslims did it, what pushed those Muslims – especially, the more “religious” and the more pious among them – to do something so hateful, vile and dastardly – something so alien to Islam and so contrary to their own nature, upbringing and character as Muslims?

It is not enough for America to assert that these Muslim fundamentalist fanatics hate us because of our freedoms and our democracy. For Muslim fundamentalists to hate America with such passion and to the point of wreaking such wholesale carnage on innocent civilians, there must be stronger, deeper and more complex reasons.

Common sense roundly rejects such glib clichés, generalizations and oversimplifications. What America needs to do, therefore, is to look deeper, and search harder for truth, and have the courage not to cover up the truth in the interests of short-term political expediency. For, cover-up and untruth are not the way to serve the best interests of the American people.

As a result, what America needs to do is to re-examine its policy toward the Muslim world with regard to a number of issues.

One such issue America needs to carefully reconsider is American domination and exploitation of the Muslim world and its vast resources from Algeria to Indonesia and from Saudi Arabia to Oman and Brunei.

Another issue that merits immediate American review is America’s support  of its client Muslim regimes around the world that deny Muslims the basic rights of political self-expression.

In Algeria, the Muslims played by the rules of Western democracy and won the elections fair and square. And yet their electoral victory was snatched out of their hands by the military, which, in their mind was at least tacitly supported by France and given a silent nod by America. Thereafter, the world stood by as the military massacred the Algerian Muslims by the thousands.

In other words, oddly enough, what the fundamentalist fanatic Muslims hate about America is not the American freedoms, but the forcible and often brutal denial of these very rights and freedoms for their people in their own societies.

And, rightly or wrongly, many of them blame America for it. For, they consider many of their own Muslim governments to be little more than American and European puppets.

A third issue the fundamentalists may feel strongly about is the positioning of non-Muslim American forces on the Arabian peninsula. To them, it is a direct violation of one of the basic tenets of Islam. For them, to quietly swallow the American presence on the land of Islam is to abrogate a basic religious principle.

A fourth issue of American foreign policy the fundamentalist fanatic Muslims may dislike is the American underwriting, with arms, money and political and technical support, of the brutality and inhumanity of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in direct violation of numerous U. N. resolutions.

When the fanatic fundamentalist Muslims look around their own neighbourhoods, this is what they see: indiscriminate killing and maiming, on almost a daily basis, by the government of Israel, of Palestinian civilians – men, women and children. This to them is terrorism of the worst kind.

Then they see the targeted assassination of dozens of Palestinian leaders, activists and intellectuals by Israeli security and intelligence agencies with impunity, which to them is nothing short of state terrorism.

Then they witness the daily demolition of Palestinian homes by Israeli bulldozers and the ongoing confiscation of ancestral Palestinian land for Jewish settlements in the occupied territories contrary to international law.

This to many of these fundamentalist fanatic Muslims is just another example of the brute terrorism perpetrated against them and their people in broad daylight and on a daily basis.

To many of them, what America – and the West and the world – suffered on that dark day was what they and their people throughout the Muslim world and in particular in places such as Palestine and Kashmir lived and experienced almost on a daily basis.

And this is not so just in the eyes of the fundamentalist fanatics, but also in the eyes of many of the more moderate and enlightened elements among the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world.

And then they all see, behind all these atrocities and acts of barbarism, terrorism, injustice and cruelty that are visited upon them and their families daily, the not-so-invisible hand of America – and in many instances the West.

And then they come to see clearly, helplessly and in a state of utter frustration, despair and desperation the American and Western double standards and hypocrisy when it comes to the Muslims.

It is, therefore, now time for America, in the wake of the tragedy of September 11, to review honestly and seriously its policy positions with regard to some of these issues. The American administration then needs to take the American people fully into its confidence on these issues.

For, the American people have a right to know the truth on these issues. And so does the rest of the world, even though the people in much of the rest of the world know these things better than most Americans do.

If the September 11 bloodbath leads to such an outcome on the part of America and the American people, the innocent civilians who died so tragically that day will not have died in vain.

The whole world – Muslim as well as non-Muslim – will be a safer and happier place if the tragedy of September 11 leads to the government of Israel completely pulling out of occupied Palestinian territories; halting and dismantling Jewish settlements on them; and negotiating viable borders and living in some kind of workable peace with its neighbours including the Palestinians.

As a result, these are not questions that can be brushed aside lightly. No one who has the best interests of the American people at heart, can possibly shout down, ignore or downplay these questions or simple muscle them out of the agenda for serious national and international debate and discussion.

For, the long-term security and best interests of the American people – Muslim as well as non-Muslim – and of the rest of the world are inextricably intertwined with the answers to some of these questions and to other questions like them.

Maybe, as time goes by, and as the anger and grief subside, some of these questions will inevitably find their way to the surface. There were indications that such a review of American policy toward some of the most sensitive Muslim issues such as Palestine was already being undertaken by the Bush administration.

It is reported in the press – actually under-reported considering its enormous importance – that the American administration had made a decision, a few days prior to September 11 massacre, to declare its support for a Palestinian state.

According to media reports, Secretary of State, Gen. Collin Powell, was set to make the announcement to the United Nations General Assembly, when – as they say – all hell broke lose and took the wind right out of the sail of such an announcement, if not actually render it almost irrelevant.

But there is no reason why the Bush administration should not regroup on this issue and make it a key focus of their foreign policy. It certainly has the potential to address one of the oldest, deepest and most obstinate root causes of unrest and terrorism in the world.

So, someday, some of these questions will be raised and discussed and some of the answers will be forthcoming. But will it be too late by then? Will a great many more innocent lives have been lost as a result of our indiscriminate bombing of people and places before we pause and ask if we are really doing the right thing?

Next Article: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 – THE Muslim Story and A strategy for Coping – Part Two

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