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Tuesday, 06 February 2007 15:17 |
| John North
Editor & Publisher |
I recently was highly inspired by the ideas and clear thinking extolled in a Jan. 25 column that was headlined "Where is the Arab M.L. King?" written by The New York Timesë Thomas L. Friedman.
The "M.L. King" cited, of course, is a reference to Martin Luther King Jr., a slain civil rights leader from the United States. Perhaps just as appropriately one could ask, "Where is the Arab Gandhi?" referring to Mahatma Gandhi, the slain "Father of India."
In
his column, Friedman expressed his wish for someone in the Arab-Muslim
world to speak out loudly ÇƒÓ and nonviolently (as did King in the U.S.)
ÇƒÓ against barbaric sectarian murders by Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq, as
well as other acts of violence perpetrated by Arab-Muslims against each
other everywhere, almost daily.
In his view, the
Arab-Muslim world remains silent to nearly anything and everything that
happens, except when it erupts with anger and violence in reaction to
perceived threats from the West, especially the U.S.
Friedman said he
doubts the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy ÇƒÓ alone ÇƒÓ will resolve the
problems in Iraq. Indeed, he believes that for there to be any hope for
Iraqës future, a Muslim counternihilism strategy is needed to address
the mass murder of Muslims by Muslims.
Moreover, he
sees counternihilism as Iraqës greatest hope because, with no moral
voice to protect its own, efforts to generate a modern democracy are
futile.
"The Quran
describes the Prophet Muhammad as a prophet of mercy," Husain Haqqani,
the Pakastani-born director of Boston Universityës Center for
International Relations, told Friedman.
"Muslims begin all their acts,
including worship, with the words: ǃÚIn the name of God, the
compassionate, the merciful.ë The Quran also says, ǃÚTo you, your faith,
and to me, mine.ë But unfortunately, these mercy-based, peacemaking
ideas are lost (today) in the overall discoourse in the Muslim world
about reviving lost glory and setting right the injustice of Western
domination."
Haqqani added,
"For a Muslim Martin Luther King to emerge, Muslim discourse would have
to shift away from the focus on power and glory and include taking
responsibility as a community for our own situation."
Sadly, as
Friedman rightly points out, many of the more liberal members of the
Arab-Muslim world are virtually under house arrest, with their lives
threatened by Islamists.
To me, itës
ironic that the Arab-Muslims so easily can unite against Western
powers, but fail to come together against sectarian violence. Whatës
more, they cannot even find a way to rule themselves, making it seem
like they always will need an outside force to control their
governments.
Friedman also
quotes what he terms as "the brutally honest" Syrian-born poet Ali
Ahmad Said, known as Adonis, who delineated what is at stake in an
interview in Paris on March 11, 2006 with Dubai TV.
"The Arab
individual is no less smart, no less a genius, than anyone else in the
world. He can excel ÇƒÓ but only outside his society. If I look at the
Arabs, with all their resources and great capacities, and I compare
what they have achieved over the past century with what others have
achieved in that period, I would have to say that we Arabs are in a
phase of extinction, in the sense that we have no creative presence in
the world.
"We have the
quantity. We have the masses of people, but a people becomes extinct
when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change
its world," Said said.
Surely, someone like King or Gandhi in the Muslim-Arab world will step up to tackle these challenges ÇƒÓ eventually.
ï
John North, publisher and editor of the Daily Planet, may be contacted at publisher-at-ashevilledailyplanet.com.
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