Hushed voice among Muslims
Hushed voice among Muslims
Ian Buruma, Guardian News Service, London
The former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was
barking up the wrong tree when she chastised British Muslims for
not sufficiently condemning the Sept. 11 atrocities. The response
of British-Muslim worthies to the events in America was never the
problem.
The people we should be worrying about are liberal
intellectuals inside the Muslim world. They have been effectively
silenced. Even in Indonesia, where moderate Muslims theoretically
should now have the upper hand, their voices are muted by fear of
an Islamist backlash. In other Muslim countries, assiduously
courted as allies of the west, the position of skeptical,
liberal-minded thinkers is even more impossible.
For they are squeezed between Islamists on one side, and more
or less brutal, autocratic governments on the other. They cannot
choose either side without betraying their principles. Yet any
independent criticism could cost them their lives. Most,
understandably, opt for silence.
Here in the west, at least, you can say what you want without
being murdered. Which is why it was so depressing to read the
long list of responses to recent events by intellectuals in the
London Review of Books (LRB). Here they were, professors of this
or that, raving on about "cowboy" President Bush, about the
crassness of Hollywood movies, about the Vietnam war, about U.S.-
sponsored globalization, about capitalism and, of course, about
U.S. and Israeli atrocities against Iraqis and Palestinians.
It isn't that all these points are wrong. What is so
nauseating is the smug way with which most of them squander their
freedom by missing the point and yet write as though they are
being tremendously brave in doing so, as though damning U.S.
foreign policy or ridiculing George Bush's English is a sign of
bold dissidence.
Why could none of them bring him or herself to say that the
problem in Iraq is not Bush, but Saddam Hussein? Why did hardly
anyone point out that the main problem in the Middle East is not
Israel or globalization, but home-grown tyranny? In London or
Cambridge one can say so. In Baghdad or Teheran one cannot.
And if our western thinkers cannot be critical of non-western
dictators, why did the LRB not include one liberal Arab voice?
Oh, yes, there was one: Edward Said. He can always be relied on
to say the right thing. He is, to speak with Thatcher, one of us.
True to form, he writes about a pogrom atmosphere against Arabs
in America, U.S. violence against innocent Iraqis, and the
Palestinian problem.
But Said has also been critical at times of the tendency among
Arabs to blame everything on western imperialism. One of Said's
fiercest critics, the Iraqi scholar Kanan Makiya, has pointed out
that liberal thought in the Middle East was dealt a huge blow by
the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel.
More and more, he said, Arab intellectuals indulged in "sickly
thought-killing resentment", blaming all their problems on the
West. What was needed, he argued, was "a new self-critical
discourse".
Since Said seems to agree, I was interested to read what he
has been saying to an Arab audience. Al Ahram, a publication in
Cairo, regularly takes his pieces. On this occasion it published
a longer version of Said's LRB article. And true enough, right at
the end of his piece, almost as an afterthought, Said does say
that Arabs should be more "self-critical", more tolerant of
others, and more supportive of secular politics. Oddly, this part
of his discourse was cut by the LRB.
The bulk of the Al Ahram article, however, is a longer and
more extreme litany against America's sins. There is a "palpable
air of hatred" of Arabs in the U.S., and even talk of "nuking"
the Muslims. Violent loathing of Arabs and Muslims is stoked by
Hollywood movies, Jewish lobbies and pro-Israeli "dreadfully
racist" magazines such as the New Republic, and "bloodthirsty"
columnists in the New York Times. Although allies have "forced"
Bush to tone down his ambitions, "a huge war seems to be in the
making".
Let us hope the current war in Afghanistan does not spread
across the entire Middle East, but if I were an Arab student
reading all this in Cairo, I would surely be justified in
thinking that tolerance and self-criticism may be very good
things, but that my enemies are clearly in the West, and not at
home.
If a world-famous Arab intellectual, living in New York, says
it, well, then, it must be true. And the new, self-critical
discourse would seem to be more remote than ever.
Ian Buruma, Guardian News Service, London
The former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was
barking up the wrong tree when she chastised British Muslims for
not sufficiently condemning the Sept. 11 atrocities. The response
of British-Muslim worthies to the events in America was never the
problem.
The people we should be worrying about are liberal
intellectuals inside the Muslim world. They have been effectively
silenced. Even in Indonesia, where moderate Muslims theoretically
should now have the upper hand, their voices are muted by fear of
an Islamist backlash. In other Muslim countries, assiduously
courted as allies of the west, the position of skeptical,
liberal-minded thinkers is even more impossible.
For they are squeezed between Islamists on one side, and more
or less brutal, autocratic governments on the other. They cannot
choose either side without betraying their principles. Yet any
independent criticism could cost them their lives. Most,
understandably, opt for silence.
Here in the west, at least, you can say what you want without
being murdered. Which is why it was so depressing to read the
long list of responses to recent events by intellectuals in the
London Review of Books (LRB). Here they were, professors of this
or that, raving on about "cowboy" President Bush, about the
crassness of Hollywood movies, about the Vietnam war, about U.S.-
sponsored globalization, about capitalism and, of course, about
U.S. and Israeli atrocities against Iraqis and Palestinians.
It isn't that all these points are wrong. What is so
nauseating is the smug way with which most of them squander their
freedom by missing the point and yet write as though they are
being tremendously brave in doing so, as though damning U.S.
foreign policy or ridiculing George Bush's English is a sign of
bold dissidence.
Why could none of them bring him or herself to say that the
problem in Iraq is not Bush, but Saddam Hussein? Why did hardly
anyone point out that the main problem in the Middle East is not
Israel or globalization, but home-grown tyranny? In London or
Cambridge one can say so. In Baghdad or Teheran one cannot.
And if our western thinkers cannot be critical of non-western
dictators, why did the LRB not include one liberal Arab voice?
Oh, yes, there was one: Edward Said. He can always be relied on
to say the right thing. He is, to speak with Thatcher, one of us.
True to form, he writes about a pogrom atmosphere against Arabs
in America, U.S. violence against innocent Iraqis, and the
Palestinian problem.
But Said has also been critical at times of the tendency among
Arabs to blame everything on western imperialism. One of Said's
fiercest critics, the Iraqi scholar Kanan Makiya, has pointed out
that liberal thought in the Middle East was dealt a huge blow by
the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel.
More and more, he said, Arab intellectuals indulged in "sickly
thought-killing resentment", blaming all their problems on the
West. What was needed, he argued, was "a new self-critical
discourse".
Since Said seems to agree, I was interested to read what he
has been saying to an Arab audience. Al Ahram, a publication in
Cairo, regularly takes his pieces. On this occasion it published
a longer version of Said's LRB article. And true enough, right at
the end of his piece, almost as an afterthought, Said does say
that Arabs should be more "self-critical", more tolerant of
others, and more supportive of secular politics. Oddly, this part
of his discourse was cut by the LRB.
The bulk of the Al Ahram article, however, is a longer and
more extreme litany against America's sins. There is a "palpable
air of hatred" of Arabs in the U.S., and even talk of "nuking"
the Muslims. Violent loathing of Arabs and Muslims is stoked by
Hollywood movies, Jewish lobbies and pro-Israeli "dreadfully
racist" magazines such as the New Republic, and "bloodthirsty"
columnists in the New York Times. Although allies have "forced"
Bush to tone down his ambitions, "a huge war seems to be in the
making".
Let us hope the current war in Afghanistan does not spread
across the entire Middle East, but if I were an Arab student
reading all this in Cairo, I would surely be justified in
thinking that tolerance and self-criticism may be very good
things, but that my enemies are clearly in the West, and not at
home.
If a world-famous Arab intellectual, living in New York, says
it, well, then, it must be true. And the new, self-critical
discourse would seem to be more remote than ever.