Can the center hold against the blood-dimmed tide?

by GHAZI BIN MUHAMMAD

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

God says in the Holy Qur'an: We made you a middle nation, that ye may be witnesses over the people, and that the Messenger may be a witness over you (Al-Baqarah 2:143).

I am honoured to welcome on behalf of His Majesty King Abdullah II this meeting of the global C-100 group for West-Islamic World Dialogue. His Majesty has always welcomed all efforts to spread peace and goodwill across the world and especially in our region, and we hope that C-100 will be able to make a positive and lasting contribution in this direction.

God says in the Holy Qur'an: O ye who believe, fear God and speak words straight to the point (Al-Ahzab 33:70). Thus, I wish to: (1) describe the current situation between the West and the Islamic World, as I see it; (2) touch upon the major problems; (3) state what our common goal should be in light of this situation; and (4) identify two critical challenges facing the C-100.

The Situation

In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were three very influential political theories regarding the future of the world. You all know Samuel Huntington's 1993 thesis of a Clash of Civilizations, and you all know Francis Fukayama's The End of History and the Last Man written in 1992. Many of you will also remember Robert Kaplan's seminal article The Coming Anarchy of February 1994, where he uses the image of a luxury car driving one way on a highway and a stream of destitute refugees walking the other way to suggest that whilst one part of the world is moving comfortably and prosperously forward, much of the rest of the world is suffering horribly, and disintegrating due to poverty, disease, crime, conflict, tribalism, overpopulation and pollution. Assessing each of these theories can help us better understand the historical context of where we are today.

Huntington gets a B. He was right about tension and conflict between Muslims and the West (e.g, Bosnia 92-95; Kosovo 96-99; Chechnya 94-96, 99-2001; 9-11-2001, Afghanistan; Iraq 2003-2007 etc.) but dead wrong about either side unifying, never mind Muslim countries uniting with China. Moreover, every single Muslim country in the world has denounced terrorism, and the vast majority of governments of Muslim countries have sided with the West in one way or another. Inside Syria and Iran, the two notable exceptions, Christian-Muslim relations are excellent (witness Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius of Antioch's open letter rebuffing the Pope after his September 2006 Regensburg address).

Fukayama, who declared the triumph of Western-style democracy, gets a C. President Bush's plan for a new more "democratic" Middle East as outlined on 6 November 2003 to the National Endowment for Democracy still languishes. The most "democratic" (in the Western sense) Muslim countries in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Lebanon) are either in civil war or close to it. And as we should know from Hitler's 1933 election — or from the actions of the majority of Hutus in Rwanda in 1994, or of the majority of Serbs in Bosnia from 1992-1995 — western-style democracy simply does not work where: (a) there are no pre-existing democratic institutions that can overrule demagoguery; (b) there is no democratic culture that can control and channel fear and hatred, and (c) where the majority seeks to gain power in order to slaughter the minority, for reasons that go back hundreds of years. Plato warns us of this in the eighth book of The Republic, and Herodotus hints at it in the third book of his Histories.

Kaplan gets an A minus. He was right about increased anarchy and wealth in the world, but he failed to see the unique tensions existing between Muslims and the West. After all, Muslims and Christians together constitute some 55 percent of the world's population, so this is a significant omission.

So where are we now? Sectarian wars, and political and religious distrust dominate the peoples of the Middle East and its relationship to the West. Chaos, conflict and disease ravage the horn of Africa and Darfur. Terrorism threatens everywhere in the world. We pray conflict does not break out in the Persian Gulf.

It is true that polite and educated company all over the world make positive and optimistic comments about the other side, but there is not enough trickle-down to the masses and to popular culture. Moreover, as the current Pew Global survey shows, religious attitudes between Muslims, Christians and Jews are generally hardening and getting worse, not better. A cursory review of the world's biggest bookseller, Amazon.com, shows that more Americans are buying books about Islam written by vitriolic former Muslims now touted as experts and sponsored by Christian Fundamentalist groups, than written by serious Muslim or non-Muslim scholars. In the West there are whispers of a "Long War"; an idea which in the Islamic world is taken to be directed against all Muslims.