1. Yanuar -- Profit amidst misery
1. Yanuar -- Profit amidst misery
2 x 23
Profit amidst misery:
Water is not a commodity
Bill on water resources:
Water is not a commodity
Yanuar Nugroho
Director, Business Watch Indonesia
Lecturer, Sahid Univ. Surakarta
Researcher, Unisosdem Jakarta
yanuar-n@unisosdem.org
2. Rob -- Do they really hate the West?
2 x 30
Do they really hate the West?
Do Muslims really hate the West?
A little sensitivity would help
Rob Asghar
Contributor
Los Angeles
rasghar@earthlink.net
Thousands of Pakistanis chanted "Down with America" recently
in the wild, woolly and somewhat insane frontier town of
Peshawar. Is this further evidence that Muslims "hate" the
United States and the West? The answer is mixed.
First, one should point out that, on the teeming streets of
major Pakistani cities, the presence of a few thousand angry
people is less of a political statement than a coincidence. In
the capital city of Islamabad, only a few hundred protesters
bothered to report for duty.
Second, several million Muslims of foreign descent live in the
United States, England and other Western nations, call them home,
and have no intention of going back. They often come for an
education and a head start in a career, and find themselves being
"infected by the Western bug," coming to appreciate the West's
unique blend of freedom, stability, openness, tolerance and
opportunity.
The American brand of Islam is vastly different from that seen
in a Peshawar neighborhood. Many of these American Muslims
proselytize, not to send converts to Afghan training camps, but
simply to help others live lives of moral order.
Third, many of these Muslims would want nothing more than to
bring many of their kin here to join in the fun. They loathe
Osama bin Laden for making the task so difficult due to stiffened
Western immigration rules.
Yet many Muslims around the world do feel antipathy toward
aspects of the West. It ranges from exasperation with Western
entertainment to fear of Western morals to knee-jerk voting
against Republicans to the full fury of a small cut of the Muslim
population. The U.S. government and media have so far failed to
understand this spectrum of negativity.
Muslims are indeed jealous of American love for Israel and are
flummoxed and polarized by it. Many puzzle over how Israel's
friends and supporters can lobby so effectively for aid, loans,
and non-interference with settlement policies that the U.S.
opposes. They hear that "Israel is an American friend," and they
wonder why oil-rich Muslim nations couldn't be seen as more
attractive friends.
They hear that "Israel is a democracy," and wonder why that
has so little to do with American geopolitical strategy in other
parts of the world. They hear that "Israel shares our Judeo-
Christian values," and they wonder why the U.S. media opts not to
show the destruction of Palestinian homes that preoccupies the
Al-Jazeera network.
And they of course view matters still more cynically when
North Korea flashes a far more advanced nuclear capability than
Iraq, yet is demonized far less by the American right wing.
The irony is that American Muslims and American political
conservatives are natural allies, especially in the area of
personal and social morality. But such an alliance won't happen
for many moons, because conservatives have been the most
enthusiastic in criticizing Islam and maximizing the perceived
threat of the Islamic world.
Want to irritate many American Muslims who are deeply devoted
both to their faith and to their adopted American homeland?
Switch channels even briefly to the rabidly conservative Fox
News, and listen to their outcry. Fewer howls of protest would
meet an airing of the Playboy Channel than the sight of a
Rumsfeldite hawk spinning scenarios to humiliate an already
emasculated Arab population.
For its part, the Bush administration can do a few things to
narrow the breach between the world's Muslims and the United
States government. Bush must rely less on the Rumsfeld and
Cheney wing's strident articulation of geopolitical priorities.
His administration must try to do a far better job of
articulating a moral and strategic basis for supporting Israel in
terms that fair-minded Muslims (yes, they do exist) can respect.
And the American administration must be far more sensitive to
the seeming contradictions in their policies and the
repercussions within Muslim communities. Doing so won't solve
all the world's political problems, but would at least constitute
a step toward controlling them.
The writer is a second-generation Pakistani American and
Presbyterian elder. He contributed this comment to The Jakarta
Post.